Beshara Doumani, the Director of Middle East Studies at Brown University, has expanded it to include a Center for Palestinians Studies, which was inaugurated in 2014. Like many such outlets, its sole mission seems to be a radical critique of Israel to present it as a colonial state which subjugates the native population. Needless to say, the colonial paradigm, normally applied to the study of European colonialism in Africa and Asia, does not recognize the historical link between the Jews and the Holy Land.
But Doumani, well versed in the anti-Israel discourse, understands that recruiting Israeli scholars would make the colonial paradigm more credible while avoiding charges of anti-Semitism. Doumani has been hosting well known critics of Israel as Ariella Azoulay and Adi Ophir.
Professor Gadi Algazi, a scholar of late medieval and early modern social and cultural history at Tel Aviv University is another guest at the Center. After receiving tenure, Algazi, a life-long political activist, switched from his appointed subject, to writing political work on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from a colonial perspective, something that in the exact sciences is unheard of.
While at Brown, earlier this year Algazi took part of a panel titled "Archives, Diaries, and Colonial Appropriation." His paper, "Profits of Military Rule" promised to analyze colonialism and "profit-generating mechanisms" between 1948–1958. In particular, he focused on the "appropriation and of the social groups who owe their wealth to the military rule imposed on Palestinians in Israel".
To show how far he had traveled from his original training as a medievalist, the paper is bristled with neo-Marxist, critical jargon such as "class formation under settler colonialism" and other phrases beloved by scholars eager to show their neo-Marxist bona fide. The paper begins with "oral accounts of Bedouin deportation and dispossession, originally encountered in the context of my political work" and ends with the goal of establishing the "legacy of past colonial violence and unequal access to modes of transmission."
Turning his activism into academics, Algazi finds audiences to his theory. He also spoke at the Colgate University Center for Peace and Conflict on "Making Them Pay: Israel and the Political Economy of Military Rule, 1948-1958" detailing the "intersection of military rule and political economy in Israel." More recently he spoke on the subject of "What do we do against colonialism?" at a conference organized by the platform of Balad party, the group which opposes the idea of Israel as a Jewish state, and favors binational state.
Algazi was never shy of admitting his activist credentials. In a lengthy interview Algazi spoke about growing up in a activist home and his decision to refuse military service while being a student at Tel Aviv University in 1980. He also mentioned his "dear friend" Leon Sheleff from Tel Aviv University's Law School who defended him in court on charges of refusal. Joining the academy was the next logical step, where, as noted, activist faculty could launch a career in political polemics supported by the tax payers. It is this path that led him to the lush campus of Brown University.
It would be interesting to know whether Algazi is familiar with the encampment of the Pokanoket Nation, a native American tribe, which has been protesting the theft of its land by Brown. So far, the Ivy League school has offered a vague promise to study the charges. Even if he is familiar, he probably would not elaborate on the subject and neither would his host Doumani who served as a discussant at the "Archives, Diaries, and Colonial Appropriation" panel. After all, it doesn't serve their political agenda.
This is not academically sound. For the sake of proper academic conduct Tel Aviv University should have reined in its staff's penchant for political activism.

Consecutive Evaluation Committees created by the Council for Higher Education to evaluate social sciences noted that in certain departments, there is a high concentration of neo-Marxist, critical scholars, a school of though that opposes mainstream approaches in social science. The preponderance of such scholars, who also tend to be political activists, has undermined the standing of Israeli social science in the international academic ranking, and forced the tax payer to support activists masquerading as scholars.
IAM has covered this issue extensively but, by now, many of the older generation of these academic-activists retire. A new generation has been recruited into the academic ranks, many of them, students of the older scholars. Yoav Kenny, a post-doctorate fellow from Tel Aviv University is a prominent case in point.
Kenny completed his Ph.D degree at TAU's Philosophy department under the leading neo-Marxist critical theorists Adi Ophir and Anat Matar. Kenny's recent proposal for post-doctoral research at the TAU Ethics department is titled: The War on Terror and the “Weaponization of Life”: Toward a Normative Ethics of Individual Corporal Violence in Extreme Political Circumstances.
Kenny proposes to analyze neo-liberal sovereign states and how in the "normative ethos of liberal democracies... Suicide bombings, individual military targeted killings, force-feeding of detainees who are hunger-striking unto death, torturing of inmates who are suspected of being “ticking-bombs”, self-immolation of political prisoners, the use of human-shields by both soldiers and terrorists – all of these manifestations of individual corporal violence... currently underlies the political violence of terrorists, dissidents and nation-states alike."
Kenny plans to use Foucault’s "bio-political conclusion" on the symmetry and reciprocity of power and violence, and "between hunger striking and force feeding, between human shields used by terrorists and those used by the army, between self immolation of prisoners and detainees and the torture of the same individuals by the state, and between suicide bombings and the killing of civilians as “collateral damage” of individual military targeted killings." Kenny will juxtapose acts of terrorism and acts of states fighting it.
Here is a plain language translation for those who may be confused by this neo-Marxist, critical theory jargon. Israel and other liberal democracies which are fighting jihadist terrorism are equivalent to the terrorists themselves.
IAM has emphasized that it is the responsibility of the academic authorities to make sure that a balance between neo-Marxist, critical scholarship and mainstream approaches is maintained. If the authorities do not act, the balance would be breached in favor of the former. The consequences for failure to act are known. The tax payers would be footing the bill for subpar social science performance.

IAM has written extensively about Daniel Bar-Tal, a retired political psychologist from the TAU school of Education and a staunch political activist. On September 28, Bar-Tal spoke at the prestigious School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution (SCAR) in George Mason University. The purpose of his lecture, according to the invitation, was to "promote his political initiative 'Save Israel - Stop the Occupation'." Bar-Tal was presented as "one of the leading scholars of the psychology of conflict."
Bar-Tal has been a long time political activist. IAM reported that he claimed authorship of 'Occupartheid' to describe the Israeli regime, and to prove his point he posted an open letter on the website of Juan Cole, a professor at Michigan University and a notorious critic of Israel. On another occasion he authored a letter addressing liberal Jews calling for their active involvement in "our struggle for the image of Israel." Bar-Tal has served in an expert committee that produced a report on Israeli and Palestinian school books which was described by the Israeli Ministry of Education as "biased, unprofessional and severely lacking objectivity." Those who appointed Bar-Tal should have looked into his objectivity, a required standard for academic analysts.
Ironically, Bar Tal makes little secret of his political views coloring his academic writings.
A longstanding member of the leftist Meretz Party, in a 2014 Meretz publication he admitted as much. "There is no doubt my subjective perception is fueled by the knowledge, values, and worldview in which I hold. In fact it is impossible to be aware of the extent of the effects of these factors have on my current thinking... I too can analyze the events only from my own world and I try to analyze the current war with my expertise in Political Psychology, with data I have, in looking at the recent past in our region, the history of our conflict in its entirety and general history which possible to learn from quite a bit. Also, I try to see things from the perspective of Hamas and the Palestinians in order to understand their notions, interests and feelings and this is reflected quite a bit in this regard."
Bar-Tal is one of pioneers of the theory that Israelis cannot assume peace with the Palestinians due to a Holocaust trauma and a Masada syndrome. This “all in their head” absolves Bar-Tal from considering the role of the Palestinians in hindering the peace process. Since Bar-Tal is not an expert in Middle East Studies and lacks knowledge on Islamist Jihadism, his observations are partial, based on scrutinizing the Israeli side alone and blaming it for all the ills of the region.
By inviting Bar-Tal, SCAR has provided a distorted picture of the conflict to its students.

The French Palestine 13 is a local group of the Association France Palestine Solidarité (AFPS) based in Bouches-du-Rhône. It declares to be apolitical but the website promotes BDS. It is the only organization to publish an invitation to join Le Monde Diplomatique, the French monthly newspaper, on a study tour to the region of Israel/Palestine in October 2016.
Le Monde Diplomatique is running tours and courses, it's website explains that "Le Monde Diplomatique shares its expertise and singular look that gives it a decline of sixty years on the turbulent history of the world, in partnership with the European Institute of Public Policies (IEPP) recognized organization, which aims to provide training to the elected that will improve their local and international action."
The newspaper that offers analysis and opinion on politics, culture, and current affairs, is known to have left-wing leaning.
But with the current atmosphere in Europe, it is not surprising that it has invited two Israeli radical academics to speak - Gadi Algazi and Shlomo Sand, both of Tel Aviv University.
IAM has noted before that both Gadi Algazi, an expert on Medieval Europe, and Shlomo Sand, now retired, an expert on French history and culture, for years have used their academic positions to write and speak on the Arab-Israeli conflict - a field not within their expertise - something that Tel Aviv University should have objected to.
Acknowledging this breach of trust of encroaching on fields of research not his own, Sand stated in the foreword to his book The Invention of the Jewish People that:
"Though the present work was composed by a professional historian, it takes risks not usually permitted or authorized in this field of endeavor. The accepted rules of academe demand that the scholar follow prescribed pathways and stick to the field in which he is supposedly qualified. A glance at the chapter headings of this book, however, will show that the spectrum of issues discussed herein exceeds the boundaries of a single scientific field. Teachers of Bible studies, historians of the ancient period, archaeologists, medievalists and, above all, experts on the Jewish People will protest that the author has encroached on fields of research not his own. There is some truth in this argument, as the author is well aware. It would have been better had the book been written by a team of scholars rather than by a lone historian. Unfortunately, this was not possible, as the author could find no accomplices. Some inaccuracies may therefore be found in this book, for which the author apologizes, and he invites critics to do their best to correct them."
Inaccuracies were too many. Anita Shapira, the renowned professor of Jewish History wrote of Sand's "attempt to drag history into a topical argument, and with the help of misrepresentations and half-truths to adapt it to the needs of a political discussion, and all this, ostensibly, under an academic mantle. Sand has written a sharp, pointed polemic drawing on much varied historical material which he re-kneads at will...Sand bases his arguments on the most esoteric and controversial interpretations, while seeking to undermine the credibility of important scholars by dismissing their conclusions without bringing any evidence to bear."
Similarly with Gadi Algazi, who is described in the invitation to the tour as a professor (French) history at the University of Tel Aviv and representative of the anti-colonial movement Palestinian and Jewish Israeli Tarabut-Hithabrut," will be speaking on "Jewish-Arab movement for social and political change." Also, earlier this year Algazi spoke in a conference in India on "Dispossession, Mediation and Attachment to Land: A Case Study from Israel in the 1950s." Again, Algazi's expertise, as taken from his TAU website, is "Late medieval and early modern social and cultural history; historical anthropology; the history and theory of the social sciences; settler colonialism and frontier societies." His website includes a long list of Publications and lectures including Books, Articles, Editorial Work, Volumes Edited, Reviews, Translations; Courses: Lectures, Graduate Seminars, Undergraduates Seminars, and Introductory Exercises - None of which includes anything even close to the topic of Israel/Palestine and his presentation for Le Monde Diplomatique.
The damage to the Israeli academic community by professors who speak in fields not related to their own can not be underestimated. Universities should have not tolerated such misbehavior.
By bringing disqualified persons to speak on the Palestinian/Israeli dispute, and by presenting one-sided perspective alone, Le Monde Diplomatique is presenting partial information. A more balanced Israeli perspective is missing.

Tel Aviv University Law School has a long history of political activism, a fact demonstrated in its one-sided conferences dealing with political issues such as the occupation. For instance, in 2007 Amnon Rubinstein, the first dean of the Law School, lamented this fact in an op-ed in the Jerusalem Post.
To the charge of unbalanced panels should be added another one: organizing conferences that pay only the skimpiest attention to law. The Conference on Queer Theory co-sponsored by the Law School is a case in point. It has been co-sponsored by Professor Aeyal Gross to showcase a book by Amalia Ziv, Explicit Utopias: Rewriting the Sexual in Women’s Pornography.
The speaker on the panel include:
Yael Mishali, gender program, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and the program for Gender Studies supported by NCJW, Tel Aviv University, "Pleasure under patriarchy: Feminist Porn Is it possible?"
Atalia Israeli-Nevo, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, "Girl with cock is not subversive: the surplus and shortage of female transsexuals in porn"
Lital Weinbaum, program of Gender Studies, Tel Aviv University, "Slash's actions of non-binary gender"
Avner Rogel, The Steve Tisch School of Film and Television, Tel Aviv University, "Fast forward and pause: temporal queer porn films"
Amalia Ziv, gender program, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, "Pornography and Pedagogy"
Out of the other panels at the conference, only one can be legitimately considered as having a legal orientation. The others are a hodgepodge of discussions on gay and queer activism, sexuality and pornography.
This is not to claim that there should be no academic discussion of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer (LGBTQ) issues. To the contrary, the evolution of the LGBTQ movement has involved intense legal debates. For instance, the United States has been currently gripped by the issue of bathroom access for transgender people. It was provoked by a law in North Carolina which would mandate access to bathrooms based on the gender in the birth certificate.
The question then is why should a Law School host a conference which has so little to do with legal issues?
The answer is quite simple. Aeyal Gross and Amalia Ziv are “comrades in arms.” As IAM reported before, Gross started his activist career in Kvisa Shchora (Black Laundry), a splinter of the gay movement in the 1980s, which self defined as queer. Gross and other queer activists developed the so-called “pink washing” theory, that is the notion that Israel’s liberal treatment of gays is a cover up of its sins of occupation. In 1996 she and Gross organized the a study group of queer theory, which subsequently led to the annual Alternative Sex (Sex Acher) conferences. As written in her c.v, Ziv has been giving seminars on the anti-occupation activism for years, such as in NYU on "Performative Politics in Israeli Queer Anti-Occupation Activism"; and published “Performative Politics in Israeli Queer Anti-Occupation Activism,” as well as "Queering Protest and Performing Queerness in Israeli Queer Anti-Occupation Activism." Gross too has chaired a round table, in a Sex Acher conference, "Forty Years of Occupation, and Not a Minute Longer: On Pride and Occupation".
The “Alternative Sex” conferences is just one in a long series of abuse of academic freedom by activist faculty that IAM discussed in length. University authorities need to make sure that tax payers money is not misappropriated for private political ventures.

In November 2015 the Minerva Humanities Center at TAU revealed that Ariel Handel replaced Adi Ophir as the new director of the Lexicon for Political Theory, Ophir supervised Handel's Ph.D along with Tovi Fenster. Replacing Ariella Azoulay in the Photo-lexic project is her Ph.D student Ruthie Ginsburg.
Handel's CV is quite revealing, he has been in a post-doc positions since 2010, earning grants from Rosa Luxemburg Foundation among others. In 2013 he was a visiting scholar at the department of Geography at the University of Cambridge working with Prof. Ash Amin, member of the board of the Durham Palestine Educational Trust, a British charity "aims to contribute to the social and economic development of the Palestinian Authority . The DPET offers master degree scholarships at Durham University for Palestinian graduates." Handel is also a political activist. For instance, in 2002 he signed the petition Courage to refuse,
For the summer of 2016, Handel has applied to the Antipode Foundation for their "Scholar-Activist Project Awards" which provides scholarship in the field of "radical geography". Antipode's "Awards are intended to support collaborations... that further radical analyses of geographical issues." Handel's listed his research as "Critical Studies in Israel/Palestine."
Particularly troublesome is the circumstances of Handel's appointment, which contravened accepted procedures of publishing in the slot and seeking competitive candidates. To appoint Ophir's P.hD student to replace him is quite unethical. Tel Aviv University should be more vigilant about the appointment protocols in Minerva. Handel is a classic neo-Marxist, critical activist, a theory which is well overrepresented in the academy. As a public institution, Tel Aviv University has a responsibility to the public who is funding it. IAM has repeatedly emphasized that the hiring of political activists masquerading as academics is detrimental to the standing of social sciences in Israel that have a particularly poor scores in the key comparative higher education indices.

Dr. Anat Matar is a member of faculty at Tel Aviv University philosophy department. IAM has written extensively on her extensive political activism, which apparently prevented her from publishing enough to be promoted above the position of senior lecturer.
Matar is one of the first Israelis to endorse BDS against Israel and a long proponent of army refusal. She was quoted in a 2011 book as stating, “but the army gets away with murder in this country. And when a kid puts his head on the guillotine, sometimes people wake up and smell their own shit."
In spite of a law against BDS she has been engaged in recent BDS activities. In a conference on BDS that took place in Nazareth in February, Matar spoke about the role of the academia. "She said that Israeli academia was integral to the oppression of Palestinians, with strong ties between the universities and Israel’s various security industries... she said sympathetic academics should refuse to organise international conferences in Israel." Omar Barghouti the founder of the BDS movement, has "highlighted the successes of the BDS campaign since it was launched by Palestinian civil society in 2005, and the importance of keeping the movement open to all, including Israeli Jews."
Matar is quite proud of her role as an anti-Israel activist, as can be seen by a note she wrote for a journalist: "As a Jewish Israeli opposed to the state’s policies of occupation and discrimination, I know what it’s like to be smeared with claims I am a ‘traitor’ or ’self-hating Jew’."
As part of the Israeli Apartheid Week, Matar is scheduled to appear on the 11th of March 2016 in an event in Helsinki, Finland, "The world behind bars: the occupation of the laws and political prisoners," where she will be speaking in an "expert discussion". The organizers explained that the debate "Included an Israeli philosopher and activist Anat Matar." The organizers also stated that "Turkey and Israel/Palestinian political turmoil are in the headlines, and the Western Sahara occupation continues in silence. The dead receive attention in the media, but rarely remembered the political prisoners who are languishing in jails for years. Israel, Morocco and Turkey, all of the EU's allies, using the judiciary to political power, as a tool."
In a 2012 article in Kivunim Hadashim, Professor Ziva Shamir, the former head of the School of History at TAU, revealed that some faculty have turned their university offices into extensions of their political party bureaus. "An advice to those faculty, a small but vocal minority that call for a boycott of Israeli academia - please move abroad, so you would not have to teach in the institutions of higher education which you so despise. The law allows firing workers who advocates boycotting their own factory, on the grounds that he or she causes damage to the factory. Academics who call for boycott cause tremendous damage not just in financial terms but also in terms of legitimacy."
Evidently, Matar has not taken this advise to heart. While being a TAU employee she is still travelling and speaking for BDS when it is illegal.

In a recent appeal (see below) to their peers, a group of academics expressed their support in "Breaking the Silence" (BtS), a political group described as "Israeli soldiers talk about the occupied territories," which gathers testimonies by former soldiers in order to protest against the occupation.
According to the BtS website "Breaking the Silence is an organization of veteran combatants who have served in the Israeli military since the start of the Second Intifada and have taken it upon themselves to expose the Israeli public to the reality of everyday life in the Occupied Territories. We endeavor to stimulate public debate about the price paid for a reality in which young soldiers face a civilian population on a daily basis, and are engaged in the control of that population’s everyday life."
BtS has hit the news recently when the Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon blocked the group from engaging with soldiers, also the Minister of Education Naftali Bennett blocked them from speaking in schools. Both Yaalon and Bennett responded that the group allegations against the military were groundless, that the group had “malicious motives” and that they wish to "besmirched Israel’s image around the world".
While the politicians have focused on the BtS funding by European governments, the group's activity is troubling at the more substantive methodological level. According to a Ph.D dissertation on BtS by Michal Givoni at TAU written under Prof. Adi Ophir, the group adopted the so-called critical witness methodology. IAM wrote twice about Givoni and her critical approach to witnessing. Traditionally, the act of witnessing to atrocities was understood to have a semi-legal meaning; the witness was expected to have first-hand experience with the event and provide truthful testimony. Critical theory of witnessing makes no such demands of the witness. To the contrary, the act of witnessing is said to be “moral act” whereby the witness is encouraged to testify to the underlying evil of the regime; the witness is not required to have personal experience with the event or to provide an empirically based testimony of what had transpired.
Moral witnessing calls on "witnesses" to go beyond empirical fact and reality to encompass the deeper underlying evil of the situation, including the Israeli occupation of the Palestinians. Givoni wrote approvingly of the controversial testimony of Breaking the Silence used by Judge Goldstone in his report on Operation Cast Lead: "Testimony was not to be confounded with traditional forms of storytelling whose assumption of perfect correspondence between history, memory, and narrative was invalidated in the face of limit experiences of violence and destitution.”
In other words, critical theory of testimony is not subject to such benchmarks as empirical accuracy; witnessing serves the higher goal of establishing that evil that was perpetrated by a dominant force against the victims: “A private, even intimate gesture of memory, it was nevertheless construed as the primary form of struggle against the always-imminent realization of murderous political projects."
In addition, BtS gathers testimony from witnesses under the guise of anonymity. This type of testimony would never pass the muster of law. The BtS questionable reputation for fudging the truth is at the heart of the issue.
But the generous funding received by the BtS is interesting in its own right. According to the Israeli Registrar of NGOs website, the organization offers very generous benefits for its top executives. The salaries of the five highest earners, is above the average Israeli income. [A list of Foreign Governments donations are listed by the Ministry of Justice.]
It is worth noting also that one of the BtS directors is Dr. Assaf Sharon, a new recruit in the Philosophy Department of TAU. According to an IAM's post, Sharon is a critical philosopher, that is, follows the neo-Marxist, critical paradigm. Though he was only hired last year, he now serves as the head of a new BA program combining Philosophy, Economics, Political Science and Law. According to its website, the PAKAM program focuses on the fields of knowledge pertaining to the State and Governance. In plain English, PAKAM offers a neo-Marxist, critical analysis of the Israeli state and its governance.
The list of academics who support BtS is long and includes Neve Gordon, who called for the boycott of Israel; Roy Kreitner who called for sanctions against Israel, among others. Unsurprisingly, those who work with Sharon in PAKAM or write articles with him are among the signatories.
While faculty have a right to express their political opinions in an extramural setting, the close relations between BtS and academics is one more example of murky boundary between political activism and scholarship supported, as always, by the taxpayer.

Dr. Roy Wagner is a researcher at TAU's Institute of History and Philosophy of the Faculty of Humanities, and a teaching fellow at TAU's administration of the faculty of Humanities. Wagner has been also a fellow at the Minerva Humanities Center at TAU for a number of years, but this is hardly surprising as he is a good match to the radical neo-Marxist activism that has been trending there since its inception in 2009. Until last year Wagner was a post-doc at the Martin Buber Center of the Hebrew University for 4 years.
Wagner's political activism is no secret. A member of Anarchists Against the Wall, he is signatory #336 at the Courage to Refuse petition, in July 2014 he was among a group of some 200 Israeli citizens that sent a letter to the European Council, Commission and Parliament calling to pressure Israel to accept Hamas’ terms of truce, another petition signed by 500 activists including Wagner called for "urgent international intervention in order to stop Israel from continuing the war it has waged against the Palestinian people in Gaza... Israel's atrocities will not cease without a massive intervention by the international community."
Wagner has been following the footsteps of a number critical, neo-Marxists that are tenured at TAU. Just like his comrades he also likes to write on neo-Marxist themes. As an activist with the group "Strength to the Workers" (Koach Laovdim) which represents the administerial staff of the College of Law and Business in Ramat Gan, he penned a critique in the lines of "For two weeks now the administrative staff of the Ramat Gan Academic Center is in an indefinite strike. The damage caused is greater than the demands of the workers. It appears that when a group of Generals navigate a ship there is no room for compromise or surrender."
Recently, he has been a co-organizer of a conference held by the Edelstein Center for the History and Philosophy of Science, Technology and Medicine at the Hebrew University, where in 2009-2010 he was a post doc.
The scientific conference "Time, Space and Time-Space in Science" was held in Hebrew in October 2015. It was purely an academic event. However, most of the participants are radical activists. For example, Wagner himself justified Palestinian stone-throwing in East Jerusalem ; TAU Lin Chalozin Dovrat, protected Tali Fahima that was convicted of aiding Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades ; HUJ Eitan Grossman is a member of the solidarity with Palestinians movement ; HUJ Orly Shenker signed the petition by members of Israeli universities supporting students and lecturers who refuse to serve as soldiers in the occupied territories ; BGU Nadav Davidovitch is a member of "Physicians for Human Rights - Israel" which announced it will not obey the anti-infiltration law ; HUJ Raz Chen-Morris signed a petition calling for army draft dodging ; Weizmann Inst. Oded Goldreich was listed as supporting the boycott call of the Association of University Teachers in England in 2005 ; TAU Yoav Beirach Barak signed the declaration "It is vital at this juncture that the international community and its civil society undertake the needed complementary actions of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel."
It seems Wagner's intention is to create a network for fellow activists through the Edelstein Center conference. Similarly, the TAU Cohn Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas which established the Minerva Humanities Center served as a platform for critical, neo-Marxists that are now tenured at TAU.
As for Wagner, being a new recruit at the TAU Philosophy Department should ring the bells of the Board of Governors of TAU.

Though radical academics cannot publicly support BDS, some privately are bound to rejoice. After all, before the Knesset outlawed BDS advocacy, they have been calling for boycott for more than a decade now. Indeed, quite a few, mostly associated with "Boycott from Within," helped Omar Barghouti to organize the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), the flagship of the boycott movement. Not incidentally, those who clandestinely stand behind the BDS are all advocates of a bi-national state.
Others, however, seem to be genuinely dismayed by the BDS onslaught. Quite surprisingly, one of them, Dan Rabinowitz, professor of anthropology from TAU, penned an article to explain his dismay and anguish.
Rabinowitz, a veteran pro-Palestinian activist, was an early practitioner of critical anthropology. According to these scholars recollections of private individuals were prioritized over factual accounts and formal narratives, which, in their view, represented the "hegemonic discourse." As Rabinowitz explained, it was a "new discursive space for the Palestinians".
Indeed, critical anthropology became a popular research tool to "document" alleged Israeli atrocities in the 1948 war. For instance, a critical anthropologist from BGU who interviewed women about their war experience concluded that the IDF committed widespread rape. Though none of the women actually witnessed a case of rape and there are no factual accounts, Fatma Kassem concluded that the rape narrative was a valid representation of the situation.
Not incidentally, at the time, critical anthropology was promoted by Edward Said, who urged scholars to uncover the true narrative of the Israel-Palestinian conflict. Rabinowitz was so enthusiastic about the new use of anthropology that "at the invitation of Rabinowitz, Said delivered the keynote address at the Israeli Anthropological Association in 1998." He even allowed fabrications. Rabinowitz was among those writing in defense of Said who was caught fabricating a childhood in Jerusalem while he grew up in Egypt.
But, as Rabinowitz admits in his article below, he feels cheated by the followers of “his friend Said” that created the BDS movement. He explains that the BDS advocates want a bi-national state or deny the right of Jews to exist in the Middle East altogether.
Rabinowitz does not discuss the misuses of critical anthropology that he pioneered and which contributed the misrepresentation of the record of the 1948 war. But he should be given credit for denouncing Said's followers and their distortion of the Palestinian-Israeli dispute, not to mention the historical relations between the West and the “Orient".

Professor Gadi Algazi, one of the most radical academics-activists in Israel, has been subject to a number of the IAM posts. His latest political activities include the following. On October 13, 2015 Algazi has protested in Sakhnin in support with the Palestinian struggle. He is scheduled to speak in Paris at the Symposium "Palestinians in Israel" on Saturday, November 21, for the "Comité Vigilance pour une Paix Réelle au Proche-Orient" (CVPRPO), that is "Vigilance Committee for Real Peace in the Middle East," along with his TAU colleague Shlomo Sand.
Most surprisingly, however, is Algazi’s metamorphosis from a historian of medieval Europe to an expert on the economy of the military rule in the territories. He is scheduled to speak on the issue in December during a conference organized by the Israeli Association of Economic History hosted by the University of Haifa. All this in spite of the fact that Algazi’s academic interests, as appear on the TAU website, are: middle ages, social-cultural history, historical anthropology, Germany, and history and theory of the social sciences.
That Algazi would try and use a conference on economic history or any other occasion to bash Israel can be expected. Radical academics believe that their tenured position gives them the right to publish on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict regardless of the field of expertise they were hired for.
What is surprising, however, is the lack of judgment of the organizers of the conference. By providing a platform for a radical activist with no credentials in economics, they diminish the academic credibility of the entire program. Such shoddy standards would have never been accepted in the life sciences and should not be tolerated in the social sciences.

Professor Adi Ophir, a philosopher from Tel Aviv University, could do with some folk wisdom for a change. One saying, in particular, comes to mind: “Be careful what you pray for.”
Ophir is arguably the leading radical faculty activist. In 1987 he was the first to call for a boycott of West Bank products, urging all academics to join the plight. Subsequently, Ophir later used his position at the Minerva Humanities Center to turn it a platform for political activism. Among others, he found Israel to be on the same ontological spectrum of evil as Nazi Germany and even called on NATO to launch bombing raids on Israel in order to force it out of the territories.
His latest ventures, a conference at the New School’s Vera List Center in February was entitled “Considering Palestine/Israel. What Does Boycott Mean?” In his speech, Ophir tried to explain that, since BDS calls for right to return for the Palestinians, it upset Israeli Jews who fear that it would end their self-determination. (32 minutes into the video).
Two months later in April 2015 he held at Brown University "The Humanities in Israel/Palestine: Reflections on the State of Knowledge", billed as a joint symposium between the Minerva Humanities Center at Tel Aviv University and the Cogut Center at Brown University.
The reaction of the Palestinians to to Ophir's Vera List speech was nothing short of brutal. They slashed his argument to pieces stating: "That joint struggle will only ever open up genuine newness by connecting future redress to past dispossession, by returning to another time altogether." For good measure, the Palestinian Campaign for Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), condemned the Cogut Center Brown University symposium as a violation of its boycott guidelines.
Ophir tried to backpedal on the “joint symposium” issue. He wrote in an email to the Electrinic Intifada: “I admit that this is an ambiguous phrase, although even here the emphasis is on individuals, not on the institution... [the] phrase is not included in the poster and public announcements of the event, and it does not reflect the facts.” The cowardly effort to dissociate the event from TAU went on: “As far as I know, and as far as I have been involved in this project, the mini-symposium on the Humanities in Israel/Palestine is not ‘a joint’ project of the Minerva Humanities Center and the Cogut Center for the Humanities...The Minerva Center is part of this only in the sense that it fosters this type of academic work and gives its faculty the freedom to pursue it. The Israeli center is not involved in the organization of the event at the Cogut Center in any other way. No funding or organizational work on part of the Israeli institution is involved and the Israeli scholars do not represent Tel Aviv University in any formal capacity...I am involved in this project as a member of the faculty at the Cogut Center.”
If Ophir was caught by the vehemence of the Palestinian response, he had no one to blame but himself. In his own eyes, he is “the good Israeli” fighting side by side with the Palestinian comrades.
In his latest project he is the editor of a journal "Israeli Jews Address the Palestinian Boycott Call" where he wrote that "the BDS is the only effective form of Palestinian resistance…the BDS movement can be a very effective tool in breaking the cycle of fear and violence because it forces those who respond to it to expose and admit the nature of the regime they are defending. The BDS is a legitimate and potentially powerful form of struggle. The Zionist regime in Israel has become utterly unacceptable and should not be immune from sanctions of the kind advocated by the BDS campaign...The first step in this direction, however, must be made by Israeli Jews. They should force themselves to become addressees of the BDS’s call—and then, hopefully, they will seek to join the addressors."
The only good news is that Tel Aviv University (via its Minerva Humanities Center) would not appear as a cosponsor of radical events so as not to violate PACBI guidelines. In the words of another folk saying, “one should be thankful for small blessing.”

As the Israeli universities are engaged in yet another round of budget negotiations with the government, the usual complains about the shortchanging of higher education have been voiced. Since virtually all Israeli universities are public, they have to compete for their share of the taxpayers’ money with other sectors of the society. It is imperative thus for the universities to demonstrate that they are good stewards of the public largess.
However, as IAM has repeatedly indicated, social science and humanities have quite often employed radical activists who used their tenured positions to promote a political agenda.
Dr. Gerardo Leibner, a senior lecturer at Tel Aviv University’s General History Department fits this profile well.
He has spent most of his time trashing Israel in Spanish language publications, promoting Nakba Day on Tel Aviv University campus where he was caught on camera yelling, shoving and pushing a policeman, and even running for Knesset on The Joint List party ticket.
Leibner’s virtually full time activism has left him precious little time to research and publish. His publishing record is very modest, especially when compared to the output of an equivalent public university in the United States. Like Anat Matar andother activists that IAM profiled, he was never promoted to associate professor.
Like Matar, Leibner probably does not care about climbing the academic ladder since his true commitment is to political activism. But the taxpayers who foot his salary have the right to know why Tel Aviv University authorities have created a sinecure - a position that requires little work but giving the holder status or financial benefit - for Leibner, Matar and other activists.

Tovi Fenster, professor of urban planning at TAU teamed up with her colleague in the Archaeology Department, Rafi Greenberg, to launch a new project in "exploration of Israel's Cultural Heritage." Chemi Shiff, a new doctoral student in the Planning Environment and Communities (PECLAB) which she heads, has been put to good use in organizing the new group.
Shiff earned his stripes and a position in the PECLAB with his MA dissertation. In an article based on his thesis, Shiff writes that Israeli landscape reflects a Western-European leisure culture and "can be understood as a relatively new expression of Israeli society’s ambivalent approach to the "natural." He discusses the wine growing farms in Israel which he labelled "Wine Route" – a forbidden product, according to the laws of Islam – can be viewed as another method of detaching the indigenous Muslim" culture from the land. He goes so far as to conclude that vandalism [against such sites] is acceptable because "the extremity of the act of destruction points to the... divide created by the site... to demand participation in the shaping of the...physical and symbolic landscape."
Fenster, as noted in the previous post, is a veteran activist whose research on issues not related to planning suffers from serious "mission creep."
Greenberg is best known for his theory that there is no archaeological evidence of Jewish presence in Jerusalem. He is also one of the leaders of Emek Shaveh, an NGO that opposes Jewish digs in Silwan.
Greenberg told Aljazeera in 2013 that, "Israel has used archeology as one of the weapons in this ground war about expanding the Jewish presence in Jerusalem" and that "At first, archaeology was not part of the programme at all. At some point [2001], they saw that this was a way of gaining influence on all the open spaces - a kind of silent settlement."
At first glance, the goal of the proposed group to explore Israel's cultural heritage sounds innocuous enough. However, digging dipper into the text of the announcement below reveals that it is aimed "to give proper weight to the cultural values and the values of distributive justice and representativeness, essential in a democratic society." Those familiar with the critical, neo-Marxist jargon popular in the social sciences would note that the group limits the "exploration of the cultural heritage" to the old Marxist notion of economic equality and redistribution of resources.
Knowing the leaders of the group, there is little doubt that no other values would be "found." For a substantial part of the academics in the social sciences there is value (no pan intended) in preserving the pretense that socialism and communism are a viable reality. As long as the taxpayers support the fraternity of academic activists, such pretense is cost-free. It is the State of Israel with its subpar social science education that bears the real cost.

Tovi Fenster, a professor of urban planning at Tel Aviv University, has turned her tenured position into a platform for political activism. A perusal of her publications indicates that her urban planning research suffered from serious "mission creep," another way of saying that she has embraced what has nothing to do with urban planning. Here are some examples: "Between socio-spatial and urban Justice: Rawls' Principles of Justice in the 2011 Israeli Protest Movement”; "Tactics and Strategies of Power: The Construction of Spaces of Belonging for Palestinian Women in Jaffa-Tel Aviv"; “Teaching Gender in Israel: Experience in Tel Aviv University.” “Belly Dancing in Israel: Body Embodiment, Religion and Nationality,” and so on.
Fenster was hired to teach and research urban planning, but like other activist faculty profiled by IAM she is pursuing a political agenda at the expanse of the tax payer.
Her many graduate students have followed the lead. For example, Chen Misgav wrote his doctoral dissertation titled Spatial Activism in the City: Perspectives of Body, Identity and Memory. The Planning for the environment with communities (PECLAB) website indicates that Misgav "works as full time student on his PhD at the PECLAB since 2008 and serves as the PECLAB coordinator." His dissertation is part of Fenster's apparent effort to "re-define the concept of activism by exposing and examining the ways activists construct urban spaces using concepts such as identity, embodiment and memory. The basic assumption of this research is that activism in the global era serves as an important element in our cities."
How do Fenster and her students link this type of research to urban planning? The trick is simple: add the term “space” or “spatial” to the title and it becomes "urban planning."
Like other faculty activists, Fenster has benefited from the expansive notion of academic freedom in the social sciences. She is clearly a winner of this system. Regrettably, the students and the taxpayers are the losers.

Dr. Hagar Kotef is a lecturer in Gender Studies at Bar Ilan University and a fellow at the Minerva Humanities Center (MHC) at TAU under the leadership of Professor Adi Ophir.
Recently MHC announced the launch of Kotef's new book, Movement and the Ordering of Freedom: On Liberal Governances of Mobility, and a farewell party as she departs to take up a position at SOAS in London.
Kotef's book is in line with the writings of Adi Ophir, and his frequent co-author Ariella Azoulay. They have accused Israel with for creating a Nazi-style regime in the territories. In one of her publications Azoulay compared to the separation barrier to the Auschwitz concentration camp, its caption reads, "In this act, too, Palestinians are the ones who will be arrested. This time, however, they force the Israeli soldiers to chase them as if they were chasing (Jewish) prisoners under the Nazi regime." Not incidentally, Ophir and Azoulay have a long standing connection to Duke University which published Kotef’s book.
Kotef book seeks to place the Palestinian issue in the context of the currently popular critical scholarship of "regimes of movement," which advocates free movement across international borders, among others.
The book description states: "We live within political systems that increasingly seek to control movement, organized around both the desire and ability to determine who is permitted to enter what sorts of spaces, from gated communities to nation-states. In Movement and the Ordering of Freedom, Hagar Kotef examines the roles of mobility and immobility in the history of political thought and the structuring of political spaces. Ranging from the writings of Locke, Hobbes, and Mill to the sophisticated technologies of control that circumscribe the lives of Palestinians in the Occupied West Bank, this book shows how concepts of freedom, security, and violence take form and find justification via “regimes of movement.” Kotef traces contemporary structures of global (im)mobility and resistance to the schism in liberal political theory, which embodied the idea of “liberty” in movement while simultaneously regulating mobility according to a racial, classed, and gendered matrix of exclusions."
As noted by IAM, Kotef’s previous research included work on Machsom Watch, a group that monitors the treatment of Palestinians in border checkpoints. IAM questioned Kotef "What Gender Studies Have to do With It?" But surprisingly, the first chapter in the new book is the article Kotef co-authored with Merav Amir, a staunch supporter of BDS, that was published in 2011 "Between Imaginary Lines Violence and its Justifications at the Military Checkpoints in Occupied Palestine".
It is apparently this type of scholarship that helped Kotef to secure an appointment in the prestigious School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at the University of London. SOAS has a well-deserved reputation as a hotbed of anti-Israel activity. The SOAS Students’ Union has supported the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign (BDS) since 2005. In February, SOAS students voted in support of academic boycott. SOAS students have also been active at the national level. Helped by such sentiments, Britain's National Union of Student (NUS) adopted an official BDS resolution in August 2014.
There is little wonder that SOAS students have emerged as some of the most energetic BDS advocates. A perusal of the course offered in the Department of Political Science at SOAS tells the story. For example, Dr. Elian Weizman, a former TAU student, offers a class Critical Issues in Israeli Politics and Society". She lists her approaches as follows:
* Post-colonial approaches I – the Mizrahi question in colonial perspective;
* Post-colonial approach II – colonial legacies and realities: the ‘occupation’, law and land;
* Israeli militarism and its social and material implications: politics, gender and demography;
* Political economy: between the colonial and the neo-liberal.
Hagar Kotef's new job is symptomatic of a large trend in British universities that have a long history of offering positions to radical critics of Israel. Haim Bresheeth - University of East London & SOAS; Ilan Pappe - Exeter University; Uri Davis - University of Durham; Nira Yuval Davis - University of East London; Oren Ben-Dor - University of Southampton; Yosefa Loshitzky - University of East London & SOAS; Eyal Weizman - Goldsmiths College; Marcelo Svirsky - Cardiff University; Uri Gordon - Loughborough University; and others.
Individually and collectively, these scholars have emerged as leaders of the movement to delegitimize and boycott the Israeli academy. For instance, Davis, a former members of Matzpen, was the first to call for a boycott of Israel, Pappe took it upon himself to organize the British faculty drive to boycott two Israeli universities and, more recently, Oren Ben-Dor organized a conference at Southampton University that questioned the legitimacy of Israel to exist. After strong protest, the conference was cancelled.
It remains to be seen whether Kotef would join the Israel bashing fraternity in Great Britain. If she does, SOAS would be probably gratified.

Aeyal Gross, a law professor at TAU, is considered the architect of “pinkwashing,” a theory holding that Israel is tolerant of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexuals, and Transgender (LGBT) to cover up the “sins of occupation.” As IAM pointed out, Gross is a part of the self-described queer group that considers the mainstream LGBT community a sell-out and props for the nationalist propaganda of the government.
Unsurprisingly, Gross has used the annual Gay Pride Parade, one of the largest international gatherings of LGBT, to display his theory again. But this time his theory faced opposition. He was confronted by a gay debater James Kirchick, who asked him why “everything must have a sinister motive and come back to the Palestinian issue?" He also stated that “Israel cannot do anything right in some people’s eyes. Even the good things it does must be for bad reasons.” Kirchick also brought up the issue of gay persecution in Arab countries, stating that gays in Israel have more rights.
Gross’s evasive answers to these and other questions demonstrates his intellectual shallowness and moral cowardice. His response to Kirchick is telling in this context: “gays in the U.K. have many more rights than in Israel. So what?”
Gross clearly did not want to tackle the issue of the long-standing persecution of gays in many Arab and Muslim countries. As well known, gays are imprisoned and often executed. In the territories occupied by ISIS, gays are tortured and executed in most gruesome ways. The “so what” speaks volumes about Gross, who, ironically is an expert in international human rights.
Unfortunately, Gross is not the only among the pinkwashing theorists to evade the catastrophe that has befallen gays in the Middle East. For instance, Professor Sarah Schulman who featured prominently in the New York Times article on pinkwashing in Israel kept quiet on the issue.
It remains to be seen whether the queer community that has been so active in protesting Israel’s pinkwashing would speak up for Arab and Muslim gays.

In March 2015, Chen Misgav, a PhD candidate at the TAU Geography Department under Prof. Tovi Fenster, wrote to the Social Science Forum on behalf of the TAU Minerva Humanities Center (MHC), where he is a fellow, to announce an event in April.
The event, "To Rethink the Academia" hosted three panelists from University of Amsterdam involved in ReThink Uva, a solidarity direct action group dealing with the New University movement, the student protests in Amsterdam, and the international struggle against the financialization of academia. The group protests the "increasing numbers of temporary contracts, funding being allocated based on the number of graduates or the number of publications, and the merger- and relocation-plans carried out without staff involvement or support."
It is not surprising, since Minerva Humanities Center is the hotbed for neo-Marxist, critical scholars. The three speakers are in fact known anti-Israel activists.
Dr. Hilla Dayan, served as international relations adviser for the Coalition of Women for Peace, Israel (which supports the right of return of Palestinian refugees and calls for BDS) and is a co-founder of gate48, which "supports non-violent resistance to the occupation...the main reason for human right violations conducted by the Israeli government". Dayan claimed in the Amsterdam Law Forum 2011 that "Israel is currently undergoing a quiet anti-democratic revolution" and that civil society should "demand justice, accountability and an end to a brutal occupation by Israel must act to defend individuals and organizations from government retribution and punish this government for its anti-democratic excesses. Ensuring that Israel pays a heavy international price for domestic repression...the only way to bring the country to its senses. No matter how far-reaching new repressive laws are, dissenters and human rights defenders in Israel will not stop their struggle for democracy and justice at the government’s command."
Her partner, Dr. PW Zuidhof, joined her in a public letter against the last summer war with Gaza. They accused Israelis, who blamed Hamas for putting civilians in peril's way, for supporting war crimes of the IDF.
Dr. Erella Grassiani published in 2013 her Soldiering Under Occupation: Processes of Numbing among Israeli Soldiers in the Al-Aqsa Intifada. The book repeats the usual charges that the IDF "being numbed" from running an occupation, engaged in wholesale brutalizing the Palestinians.
Not surprisingly Hagada Hasmalit, (the Israeli radical left-wing website (that by its own admission features anti-Zionist, Marxist or anarchist perspective by Jewish Israelis, Arab Israelis, and Palestinians) has strongly promoted the event in more details.
Tel Aviv University and Minerva Humanities Center should not support events run by activists masquerading as scholars. Offering academic legitimacy to such events, diminishes the standing of legitimate scholarship.

For long, the Minerva Humanities Center at TAU has served as the premier employment outfit for radical activists. The philosopher Adi Ophir, who urged NATO to bomb Israel in order to get it out of the territories, or Ariella Azoulay, who compared the separation fence in the West Bank to the fence in Auschwitz, they and others received salaries for doing what was essentially propaganda work.
Minerva Humanities has continued this tradition by providing employment opportunities to a new cohort of scholar activists. Tom Pessah, who did his doctoral thesis "Backgrounding Ethnoracialization: The Meaning of Cleansing in Israel/Palestine, 1948" at the Department of Sociology of the University of California, Berkeley, is a case in point. As indicated below, this highly committed activist has been a Member of Students for Justice in Palestine that took part at mock checkpoints in Berkeley’s ‘Apartheid Week’ protests. He is also engaged with Zochrot, promoting Nakba recognition and responsibility of the Israeli society.
Pessah, a fellow at the Minerva Humanities, is the source of the call for papers to a conference on "Zionist Opposition to Expulsions of 1948", below.
Israeli universities are public and thus obligated to be accounted to the public and its elected officials. In the West the public supports tertiary education to advance the human capital of the country. It is well known that, for years, social sciences in Israel rank well below average and are skewed toward the critical, neo-Marxist paradigm.
For instance, the CHE Evaluation Committee of the Department of Sociology, Ben Gurion University stated that there was a real disparity between the demands of the students for applied fields such as sociology of organizations and the preponderance of classes on Critical, neo-Marxist theory. The report indicated clearly, "students are taught to comprehend society and culture from a critical perspective... While this intent is laudable...the Committee is of the opinion that the objective of the department's programs should be, first and foremost, to familiarize students with the variety of theories."
There is nothing wrong with academics who are politically engaged. However, there is something very wrong with the Israeli tertiary education that uses taxpayers money to provide salaries for activists.
Tel Aviv University authorities should be good stewards of the funding they receive. A good place to start is to look at the practices of the Minerva Humanities Center.

Professor Moshe Zuckermann (TAU) was invited to give a talk in Germany and Switzerland to launch his new book in German "ISRAEL'S DESTINY: How Zionism Operates its Demise."
IAM has repeatedly emphasized that Zuckermann, like any other Israeli citizen, has a right to free expression. But Zuckermann, who piled up a lot of frequent miles travelling to German speaking countries, gets his legitimacy from his association with Tel Aviv University.
It is deplorable that Zuckermann uses his academic credentials to peddle conspiracy theories about the alleged manipulations of Zionism, to an appreciative pro-Palestinian audiences. It is even more deplorable that Tel Aviv University used tax payers money to hire and promote a person with dubious academic credentials who spent much of his career writing anti-Israeli polemics.
Those who repeat the mantra of "academic freedom" to justify Zuckermann and his ilk are misguided. As IAM repeatedly pointed out, Zuckermann would not have been tolerated in engineering or sciences where faculty are expected to teach and research in the field of their expertise. Moreover, Zuckermann and his ilk would not be tolerated in any public university in the West where accountability protocols are strong.
Those who claim that unfettered academic freedom is the only way to achieve academic excellence should know that according to Science Watch by Thomson Reuters - a stringent comparative criteria - a comparison of Israel’s world share of science and social-science papers reveals that the Israeli social sciences trend badly behind their counterparts in the West and are the lowest of other comparative fields.
The two reports below describe Zuckermann's lectures.
The Munich talk in January was organized by the pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel group by the name Salam-Shalom and took place shortly after the murder of Jews at the Kosher supermarket in Paris, forcing Zuckermann to react. He downplayed the events of violent anti-Semitism by stating that Europe is safer for Jews than Israel. He also implied that Israeli government is exaggerating the incidents of anti-Semitism in Europe to persuade Jews to immigrate to Israel. Zuckermann even claimed, without support, that David Ben Gurion said, "if there is no anti-Semitism, we must foment something" so that Jews will move to Israel. "The Holocaust was used as an argument for Zionism, one is tempted to think that Israel had to have the Holocaust first, to enforce Zionism in politics." In his hyperbolic analysis he also stated that "all Israeli politicians manipulate people with the term anti-Semitism."
Zuckermann's second talk in February in Zurich was sponsored by Islam.ch, Cafe Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace among other anti-Israeli groups. There, Zuckermann stated that: "If today in Germany someone says: anti-Semitic, anti-Semite, this is like a wonderful present for the Israeli government." He also noted that: "The Zionists began with the negative connotation of the Diaspora which later was accomplished by the Nazis that physically destroyed the Diaspora." Zuckermann ended his talk by advising young people who are thinking of emigrating to Israel, "go somewhere else, in Israel life is too dangerous for you, with its many wars you have a good chance of not turning 21."
Without strong academic leadership no reform of the social sciences can be expected. Zuckermann and his like-minded peers will continue to travel and the rip off of the tax payers will go on.

Pro-Palestinian groups in Europe put a high premier on Israeli academics who can bash Israel without being accused of anti-Semitism. Moshe Zuckermann, a professor of German history at TAU, is a case in point. Using his knowledge of German and his “pedigree” as a son of Holocaust survivors, he has served in the role of Israel-basher-in-chief in German, Austrian and Swiss media. His "winning formula" of coupling ferocious criticism of Israel with whitewashing all things Palestinian has not changed for decades.
Zuckermann is well-known for his far-fetched theories about the alleged deformation of the Israeli psyche and his frequent comparison between Israel and Nazi Germany. He made the original diagnosis of the Israeli psyche in his infamous book Shoah in the Sealed Room - a reference to the experience of Israeli citizens who were forced into sealed rooms during Saddam Hussein's Scud missile attack in 1991. In his view, reference to Saddam Hussein as Hitler indicated the Holocaust-driven “congenital deformation” of the Israelipsyche. Zuckermann was so bent on proving deformation theory that he failed to notice that others, including the US President George H.W. Bush, used the same comparison.
In due time, Zuckermann broadened his diagnostic portfolio. In his view, criticism of Islamist terrorism following the 9/11 attack was a clear case of Islamophobia.
With the rise of anti-Semitism in Europe, not to mention the spectacular atrocities committed by ISIS in its self-proclaimed caliphate, the Israeli-Nazi equivalent fell into disrepute.
Never to be daunted by reality, Zuckermann added apartheid to his repertoire. He says Israel "passes on to an apartheid state and that is more or less the trend at the moment." Though the apartheid territory has been well-trodden, since Oren Yiftachel and his Ben Gurion University colleague Neve Gordon first found Israel to be an apartheid state in the early years of the twenty first century, Zuckermann has all the zeal of a new convert.
He was recently invited to Zurich, Switzerland, and in February 4, 2015 will promote his book Israel's Fate: How Zionism Operates its Demise. The main market is pro-Palestinian members of groups such as Jewish Voice for Justice and Democracy in Israel/Palestine; Swiss Circle of Givat Haviva; Cafe Palestine Zurich; Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI) Zurich, which all sponsor the event.
As one German observer put it, Zuckermann's thesis is clear, "With this rejection of any constructive understanding policy, Zionist Israel has "maneuvered a historical impasse" in one from which it could find out probably only by surrendering its Zionist concept (or key parts of it)."
Israelis like Zuckermann provide the intellectual justification for BDS activists on campus and beyond. He has the right, of course, to speak and write on the subject. But he has adroitly used his position as a tenured professor at Tel Aviv University to push his polemics dressed up as bona fide scholarly research, a tactic that he should be blamed for. Tel Aviv University that has tenured and promoted him on this basis should share the blame.

A conference in memory of Dr. Eyad el-Sarraj, the psychiatrist and human right activist from Gaza, “Non-violent Resistance in Psychotherapy and Society" was scheduled for December 22, 2014 at the Bar Shira Auditorium in Tel Aviv University.
At the last moment, the Palestinian activists demanded that it would be moved off campus since, according to the BDS movement, the university is complicit in Israeli occupation. The organizers complied and the conference was relocated to another venue.
Still, it must have come as a great shock to the Israeli academics like Rachel Giora, Anat Matar (TAU) and Kobi Snitz (Weizmann Institute), the co-organizers since 2008 of BOYCOTT! Supporting the Palestinian BDS Call from Within. As IAM reported, Giora, Matar, Snitz, and other Israeli activists worked with Omar Barghouti who founded The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott (PACBI) in 2004.
Like many other pro-Palestinian activists, Giora, Matar, Snitz and their colleagues assumed that “good Israelis” like themselves would not be targeted. However, as the case of Amira Hass, the extravagantly pro-Palestinian Haaretz journalist, learned, her bona fides did not prevent her from being ejected from a conference held at Birzeit University for being an Israeli Jew.
In the worldview that the BDS represents, there are no “good” or “bad” Israelis. All Israeli Jews are complicit in the occupation and would be collectively judged.

Yehouda Shenhav has parlayed his position in the Department of Sociology at TAU into a successful career in political activism.
After receiving tenure, Shenhav, who was hired to teach and research the sociology of organizations, he switched to writing about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. His first venture was a book “proving” that the Mizrahim were actually Arab Jews who were robbed of their true identity by the Zionists. Not coincidentally, the book was linked to Shenhav’s role in the Keshet Mizrahit, a minuscule group that advocated forging an alliance between the Mizrahim and the Palestinians based on their joined cultural identity. The plan did not work out and worse, the Mizrhaim went on to establish the hardline Shas party whose attitude toward the Palestinians was anything but friendly.
Shenhav’s next venture involved the alleged “post-Westphalian” period in international relations. In his view, humanity was about to be freed from the scourge of nations and nationalism forged by the Treaty of Westphaliaof the mid- seventeenth century. Seizing upon this new spirit, Shenhav recommended creating a bi-national state where the Palestinians would be welcome back and would be resettled in new villages to replace the one that were destroyed by Israel. As in the case of the “Arab Jews,” Shenhav ran into reality in the Middle East, which does not bear any resemblance to the enlightened “post-Westphalian spirit.” Indeed, the current drive to create an Islamic caliphate - replete with gruesome, ritualized beheading and slave sex, seems to indicate a regression to a period much darker than anything that the Treaty of Westphalia could fathom.
Perhaps discouraged by the failure of his utopian schemes, Shenhav moved on to the relatively “reality- proof” venture of creating a Nazi-Israeli equivalency. As pioneered by Adi Ophir, a professor of philosophy at TAU and a veteran political activist who launched the first BDS movement in Israel, the exercise is quite simple. It goes something like this. Start with Hannah Arendt’s “banality of evil,” - a notion she derived from observing Adolf Eichmann trial in Jerusalem - proclaim that the Nazi’s industrial-scale murder of the Jews is not unique but part of any “oppressive relations,” and compare the Israeli treatment of Palestinians to that of the Jews during the Holocaust.
In an article “Beyond Instrumental Rationality: Lord Cromer and Imperial Roots of Eichmann’s Bureaucracy” in the Journal of Genocide Studies, Shenhav uses this formula with a slight twist. He starts with the de rigueur reference to Arendt’s conceptualization of Eichmann as a personification of the “banality of evil.” Arendt held that Eichmann was essentially a “morally aloof,” dispassionate bureaucrat with no particular bad feelings toward the Jews. His real passion, per Arendt, was bureaucratic organization. Shenhav agrees with Arendt on the issue of moral aloofness, but criticizes her for refusing to accept the alleged similarity between the British imperialism and the Nazi racist theory. In Shenhav’s view, the imperialist- colonial philosophy based on racist distinction (as exemplified by Lord Cromer, the British envoy to Egypt) and the Nazi rule are in principle similar. He chides Arendt for rejecting this linkage in her seminal work on the origins of totalitarianism: “I suggest that in this rewriting of the history of totalitarianism [by Arendt] we may find one clue to the discursive denial of the continuity between imperialism and Nazism.”
Shenhav’s eagerness to “marry” the banality of evil with imperialist–colonial bureaucracy driven by racism becomes clear in the following paragraph: “When Arendt visited Jerusalem in 1961, Israel employed its own model of ‘bureaucracy and race’ to manage its Palestinian citizens. The bureaucracy that was formed, known as a ‘military regime’, was based on imperial elements: constant states of emergency, secrecy and collaboration. The local military rulers have had tremendous power in restricting freedom of movement, granting license for businesses, determining administrative arrests, confiscating lands and other privileges.
Israel’s laws of exception were originally adopted from the British imperial rule of Palestine that was in effect since 1945.” In other words, the Israelis are no better than the British colonials who were not better than the Nazis.

Moshe Zuckermann, a professor of German history at Tel Aviv University, has spent a good part of his time writing about Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a subject that is inline with his political agenda rather than his academic vocation. His main "market" is the Marxist circles in Germany, where he often lectures and writes articles and op-eds about the alleged sins of Zionism and its "evil" progeny, the State of Israel.
In his new book in German Israel's fate: How Zionism operates its downfall, a rehashing of his previous writings, Zuckermann predicts again (and again) the downfall of Zionism.
There is something sad, almost pathetic, about Zuckermann's singular obsession with his gloom and doom theory of Zionism. Like other dogmatic Marxists, he refuses to acknowledge that the only thing that has collapsed so far is Communism. One can only imagine what Zuckermann and his Marxist peers must feel now, as Germany celebrated the twenty fifth anniversary of the unification of Berlin and the dismantling of the Berlin Wall. No amount of quoting from his favorite neo-Marxist scholars can reverse this fact. But then again, Zuckermann has never let facts stand in his way.
As for predictions, IAM can make one here. With his future secured by a generous pension, the recently retired Zuckermann will devote all his energies to bashing Israel while using his academic credentials.

Gadi Algazi, a professor of history at Tel Aviv University, specializes in medieval history. But as other radical faculty, he spends much of his time on political activism. As a matter of fact, Algazi made his name when he became the first draft “refusenik” in 1979 for which he served time in prison.
Besides serving on the bureau of the HADASH Party, Algazi is one of the founders of Ta'ayush (living together), a group that describes itself on its website as "a grassroots movement of Arabs and Jews working to break down the walls of racism and segregation by constructing a true Arab-Jewish partnership", as well as of Tarabut-Hithabrut, which is a "joint Arab-Jewish social movement seeking to address the most burning issue – the division in Israeli oppositional politics between struggles against the occupation and struggles against inequality and for social justice within Israel itself."
Using his academic credentials, Algazi embarked on the Jewish National Fund (JNF) with his comrades.
In a film screening that took place last week in Annemasse, France, Algazi was brought to present the alleged misuses of the JNF and to discuss "the importance of resistance to Israel".
The film is a new project that conceptualizes the alleged similarities between apartheid South Africa and Israel's treatment of Palestinians. The story is about a Jewish woman from South Africa who travels to Israel to visit the South Africa Forest of JNF in the Galilee. The woman discovers that the forest is located on parts of the former Arab village that was destroyed during the War of Independence.
Like his activist peers, Algazi has worked hard to create a younger generation of scholar-activists. One of his former students, Natalie Rothman, wrote in the introduction to her book: "I thank Gadi Algazi, my MA advisor and friend, whose unwavering commitment to scholarship and activism, to the study of the past and the transformation of the future, continue to inspire me."
IAM repeatedly noted that TAU and other universities had opened their doors to political activists because of an extremely liberal interpretation of academic freedom as per the Law of Higher Education 1958: "The university shall conduct its affairs the way it sees fit." In spite of past attempts, the law was never changed, creating an academic anomaly; the tax payer footing the bill for scholar activists who use their tenured positions to produce “academic” work that is used to push for academic BDS against Israel.

Dr. Efraim Davidi, senior lecturer at Tel Aviv University's Latin American History and Culture and Ben Gurion University's both Social Work and Politics and Government Departments, is a Marxist, a member of the HADASH party. Like other politically active faculty, Davidi has conveniently merged his political agenda with his academic position.
His scholarly output is a case in point. Written from a Marxist perspective, the material consists of a devastating critique of capitalism in general and Israeli capitalism in particular. A syllabus of a course he taught last year “An Introduction to the European Welfare State in the 20th Century” is even more telling. There is no pretense of offering the students a balanced perspectives. Virtually all the assigned reading represent a Marxist perspective or a Marxist critique. Indeed, the materials could have been featured in a class at Moscow University in the 1960.
During the latest Gaza Operation, Davidi told a leading Argentine paper (below) how dangerous it is to be an Israeli peace activist. Of course, Davidi did not mention his plush academic job that enabled him to become a peace activist in the first place.
As a self proclaimed expert on Middle East Davidi recently lectured in Buenos Aires (below) about the Palestinian Israeli conflict.
Davidi, like every citizen of Israel has the right to oppose Israeli policies or to become a member of a political party.
The real question is why Tel Aviv University or Ben Gurion University should be using taxpayers money to have someone like Davidi teach students courses that belong to the Agit-Prop tradition of Soviet scholarship circa the 1960s.

Many media outlets in Europe try to find anti-Israel Israeli academics who can bash Israel without being accused of anti-Semitism. Shlomo Sand, recently retired from Tel Aviv University and the author of The Invention of the Jewish People, became arguably the most interviewed academic in Israeli history.
Moshe Zuckermann, a professor of German history at TAU, is a close runner-up. Using his knowledge of German, he has served the role of Israel basher in German media, including the following Swiss paper. Zuckermann has used the same formula of decades: coupling ferocious criticism of Israel coupled with whitewashing all things Palestinians.
Zuckermann is well known in Israel for his far- fetched theories about the alleged deformation of the Israeli psyche and his frequent comparison between Israel and Nazi Germany. However, the Swiss do not understand the political agenda of this veteran Communist and anti-Zionist. The title of a professor in a respectable Israeli university gives him all the legitimacy needed to appear as an objective and dispassionate observer.
Much has been written recently about the academic BDS movement in Europe and the United States. People like Zuckermann provide the intellectual justification for the BDS activists on campuses and beyond.

For some years now, IAM reported on Shlomo Sand, a professor of French culture at Tel Aviv University, who parleyed a modest academic record for a high profile venture of bashing Israel. Unencumbered by empirical research, including genetics studies indicating the common origin of the Jews, Sand claimed that Jews are invented people, that is invented by the Zionists who wanted to colonize Palestine. The book received enormous publicity as it provided academic legitimacy to anti-Semitic conspiracy theories that claimed that the Jews were descended of the Khazars. Encouraged by his success, the ever entrepreneurial Sand went to write a book, The Invention of the Land of Israel.
Sand has recently retired from Tel Aviv University but his career in bashing Israel is not over. On the contrary, with all this free time, he is planning to take the show on the road He is scheduled to speak in London on October 14 about his new book, How I Stopped Being a Jew.
Sand, like others before him, discovered that writing anti-Semitic polemics is a winning formula. What makes him stand out in this rather large crowd is his title as a professor, now emeritus, at TAU.
Social sciences and humanities at Tel Aviv University provided a position and a salary (paid by tax payers) to Sand and other academic activists. His website on the TAU page lists his main areas of teaching: "French Intellectual History, Political History of the 20th Century, Cinema and History, Nation and Nationalism, History and Theory."
Before joining the academy, Sand, a member of Matzpen, a radical splinter of the Communist Party, worked a clerk in the post office. TAU gave him an opportunity to take his politics to a new level at the guise of academic freedom.

Dr. Assaf Sharon, a 2012 PhD graduate from Stanford University's Philosophy Department, has joined the ranks of Tel Aviv University's Philosophy Department, the base of operation of the radical political activists, Anat Matar and Anat Biletzki. He will be teaching next month the following courses: Liberalism and Capitalism ; Political Authority: Between Anarchism and Totalitarianism ; Introduction to Political Philosophy.
By most measures, Sharon has already launched a highly activist career.
Sharon is a founder of "Breaking the Silence" and serves on its board of directors.
In a Haaretz article from 2011 Sharon said that he "discovered that the struggle over Sheikh Jarrah has become the way to revive the Israeli left". The article reports that "Veteran politicians and peace activists are keeping track of them [of Assaf Sharon and Avner Inbar] with a mix of envy and concern. They're storming the campuses, and their friends say they wouldn't be surprised if next year Sharon and Inbar stormed the Knesset. "The Israeli left has forgotten that politics is more than just expressing a viewpoint or protesting in the city square, it's a concrete struggle for the street in places where the injustice is taking place," says Sharon."
Sharon also serves as the academic director of "Molad: The Center for the Renewal of Israeli Democracy". According to a 2012 article in Haaretz Molad is "committed to leftist renewal" in Israel. NGO Monitor listed Molad's funders: Molad is “funded by left-liberal foundations and groups from the U.S. associated with the Democratic party.” Molad received two grants from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund totaling $150,000 (2012-2015). Molad is listed as a grantee of NIF’s Social Justice Fund (Ford-Israel Fund) in 2011. Molad is also listed as a partner by the EU-funded Anna Lindh Euro-Mediterranean Foundation. According to the Anna Lindh Foundation, the Skoll Global Threats Foundations also funds Molad.
Tel Aviv University has a long history of hiring and promoting political activists who turn their position into an extension of their political agenda. As the following articles indicate, Sharon follows the same line.
Should Tel Aviv University tolerate once again such political activists among its midst? Surely, students and tax payers deserve better.

Professor Tovi Fenster, a Geographer at Tel Aviv University as well as the head of PEC Lab at Tel Aviv University, has recently won NIS 140,000 grant from the Israel Science Foundation (ISF). Her project is entitled "'The archaeology of the address' in urban planning: For Israeli-Palestinian recognition"
In December 2011 during an event at Zochrot, a group dedicated to the return of Palestinian refugees, she revealed her project's political agenda. Fenster noted that "its focus is the recognition by Jewish society that the history of 1948 can’t be erased through planning. The remains of villages can be erased, but that only distances recognition and the chance of future reconciliation. Institutional and political recognition must come first, and be translated into planning policy. I propose creating planning tools that will be ready when that day comes. Such tools can already be utilized today. I’m doing that with my students. The project is called, “The archaeology of the address – urban planning and recognition (reconciliation).” ...Reconciliation isn’t possible in the absence of formal recognition by the regime and an in-depth discussion of return."
In a 2013 planners conference in University College Dublin she presented a paper that "explores the possibilities of engaging processes of recognition in developing postcolonial urban spaces in Israel. It is based on a personal and academic journey to discover the original Palestinian owners of my grandparents' home in Jaffa."
Fenster admits she resents the plans to develop the village of Lifta and turn it into "a boutique village" that will be inhabited by "Jews from abroad" because the Palestinian owners still live nearby. She claims that the "right of return to the city, not only of those who live there today, but also involving the former residents in planning. Such a framework seems to me to be a context in which both groups can jointly think about the return. That’s what we’re doing in Lifta."
It is not clear whether the Israel Science Foundation understood the real purpose of the study. The ISF should stay away from academics with a radical political agenda.

Anat Matar, a senior lecturer in the Department of Philosophy at TAU, has been the subject of previous postings. Matar is a leading member of a group of radical faculty at TAU – along with Yehouda Shenhav, Moshe Zuckermann, among others - who have used their tenured positions to push their political causes.
Matar, a veteran member of the Communist Party, has virtually abandoned all her research duties to devote herself full time to her topics of choice such as BDS and Palestinian security prisoners who, in her view, should be reclassified, as political prisoners / civil resisters, and promoted conscious objection among Israelis.
At one time or another, Matar has been activist with The 21st Year, Open Doors, Hacampus-Lo-Shotek, Ta'ayush, Refuseniks Parents' Forum, The Israeli Committee for Palestinian Prisoners. In addition, Matar co-edited a book on the alleged abuses of security prisoners, as well as traveled extensively with her colleague, Rachel Giora, to promote BDS.
Given that Matar is teaching in a public university, her activism may seem excessive. But Matar explains that it is her duty to expose the “truth.”
“Truth is political:
theoretical (“constative”) content cannot be separated from practical (“performative”) force, and the latter is always politically “tainted”; the liberal fantasy about academic purity and freedom eliminates truth and reinforces conservatism and obedience. Theory should be interwoven with praxis – both within and outside academia."
Most observers would conclude that it is ironic that this Marxist heroine of “praxis” makes a living courtesy of the taxpayer. But Matar evidently does not see this here; she is truly convinced that it is the duty of the said taxpayer to support her mission of “truth.”

Hired to teach and research sociology of organizations in the Department of Sociology at TAU, Shenhav - after being tenured - has launched a profitable career in political activism masquerading as academic endeavor. As IAM reported, after co-founding the Keshet Mizrahit (The Mizrahi Rainbow), he set out to prove that the Mizrahim are Arab Jews and natural allies of the Palestinians. When, contrary to his expectations, the Mizrahim ended up creating the right–wing religious party, Shas, Shenhav moved on to offer his vision of a bi-national Israeli-Palestinian state where the 1948 Palestinian refugees would be offered their former homes.
With the Israeli-Palestinian conflict nowhere near a solution, Shenhav took up a new career – translating Arab writings into Hebrew. His first venture was “White Mask” a book by Elias Khoury, radical critic of Israel involved the BDS movement. Shenhav, now under the name Shenhav-Sharabani to emphasize his Arab Jewish heritage, explains his new mission. “Do you know how many Israeli Jews are fluent in Arabic? Two percent. It’s outrageous! And how many Palestinians in Israel speak Hebrew? Ninety-two percent. What does that say about someone coming to a place and not speaking the language? That you are a tourist, or a chance tenant? It’s not logical. It shows the colonial relationship even between the languages.”
He admits that his own return to the Arab language was difficult, as he had to learn it from scratch, but, since translating Khoury, he plans on translating six more book.
Of course, Shenhav has all the time required for this ambitious project as the Israeli taxpayer will foot the bill.

Daniel Bar-Tal, a professor of research on early child development and education at Tel Aviv University, has spent virtually his entire career writing about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, a subject that he was not hired to do and for which the Israeli tax payers are forced to pay.
Two years ago Bar-Tal and co-authors published a report on Israeli and Palestinian textbooks, that found that both Israeli and Palestinian text books are equally biased. This report was criticized by Arnon Groiss, a member of the original board that was created to supervise the project. Groiss resigned in protest over the political biases of the authors. As IAM noted, the entire process was politically driven; among others, the head of the interfaith organization that secured the grant from the State Department was an advocate of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS).
Ironically, Bar-Tal proved Groiss right as he recently claimed authorship of 'Occupartheid' to describe the Israeli regime. To prove his point, he posted an open letter on the website of Juan Cole, a professor at Michigan University and a notorious critic of Israel.
Bar-Tal, like other citizens, has a right to express his opinions. The letter, however, reflects bias prevalent in his scholarly writings, including the above report. While extensively analyzing the Israeli side, he hardly mentions the Palestinian one. This "methodology" brought him to argue that scarred by the Holocaust, the Israelis are not capable of reaching a peace agreement. Diagnosing the Jews with a psychological disorder eliminated the need to factor the input of the Palestinians into the breakdown of the Oslo process.
Yet another trick in Bar-Tal's toolbox is to proclaim periodically the end of the Israeli democracy, hence the reference to the "bottom of the Israeli democratic barrel." Since democracy has not collapsed yet, he has been forced to declare that the "barrel is bottomless", greatly exaggerating the alleged totalitarianism of the Israeli political system. In fact, as Bar-Tal knows only so well, none of the initiatives against the NGOs has passed legal muster and the anti-BDS law is being currently reviewed by the Supreme Court - with many commentators predicting its failure.
Last, but not least, in his letter Bar-Tal openly and boldly proclaims that it is the duty of everyone, including himself to fight for peace - a stated goal of his organization Combatants for Peace. Again, Bar-Tal has the right to belong to this or other organization. He does not have the right to use his academic career as a paid position to propagate his political ideas.
Bar-Tal's employers at Tel Aviv University will be well advised to read Academic Freedom in Israel: A Comparative Perspective.
They will find that only in Israel, a bloated definition of academic freedom enables Bar-Tal and his activist peers to use tax payers money to support their politics.

Activities of TAU radical academics in the past year:
· March 6, 2014 Anat Matar (TAU Philosophy) after lecturing on philosophy, gave an unofficial talk "from the perspective of an Israeli academic who has opposed Israeli policy for many years" for a pro-Palestinian group.
· Sept 07,2013 Gadi Algazi (TAU History) wrote: "As long as Israel will serve as war-head, a fortress armed against the Arab world as long as it continues with the constant war against the Palestinians and the Arab East."
· Adi Ophir, (TAU Philosophy) spent a sabbatical at Brown University where he worked hard to popularize his book The One State Condition co-authored with Ariella Azoulay (TAU, Arts). Ophir is one of the most radical academic-activists who famously "found" that Israel is on the same ontological plane of evil as Nazi Germany. Even a Meretz publication editor charged the authors with "selective amnesia in recounting history."
· Oct 10, 2013 Yehouda Shenhav (TAU Sociology) interviewed: ''If we want to rely only on the army and establish a closed Zionist ghetto, that’s the way;'' Q: What if the other side does not agree to that either, because they don’t want us here at all? Shenhav: "I think that saying such a thing is terrible ignorance. I read Arabic and I read lots of autobiographies...I find more violence and much more animosity and hatred and incitement in Jewish writing than in Arabic writing."
· Jul 6, 2013 Gadi Algazi traveled to Germany on behalf of the Bonn-based Institute for Palestinian Studies. Algazi lectured in Göttingen, Solingen, Bonn, Darmstadt, Nürnberg, Freiburg on the "Bulldozers against the Bedouins" and the Jewish National Fund (JNF) as a "settlement colonization organization".
· Feb 10, 2014 Aeyal Gross (TAU, Law) lectured in Brussels: "Homonormativity and homonationalism are preconditions for "pinkwashing" - the use of LGBT rights for propaganda purposes". Gross is one of the intellectual architects of the so-called pinkwashing, a theory claiming that the extensive rights enjoyed by the gay community in Israel are a ploy to cover up the mistreatment of the Palestinians. Gross has found multiple ways to insert his theory into public discourse, including the New York Times.
· May 2013, Raphael Greenberg (TAU, Archaeology) accused organizers of archaeological dig of accepting money from right-wing groups that are ideologically motivated to prove Jewish existence in Jerusalem. Greenberg's Emek Shaveh has been funded by the Norwegian Embassy, the Dutch Cordaid and Anna Lindh Foundation. He wrote: "When you are digging 20 or 100 yards away from the Temple Mount you are in the heart of politics, not above them. When you take money from settlers you are in the heart of politics. When you excavate in the midst of a Palestinian population that is under constant surveillance and deprived of its civil rights you are in the heart of politics."
· Mar 28, 2013 Adi Ophir (TAU, Cohn) in Occupations Workshop at Duke University. The “Occupations” workshop addresses emerging forms and meanings of occupation - "Occupy Wall Street, not Palestine".

Hezbollah spares no vituperation or vehemence in its agitation for Israel’s obliteration. It spares no effort to inflict physical harm on Israelis. It spares no expense to stockpile missiles with which to terrorize Israel. Of late Hezbollah has become Damascus despot Bashar Assad’s indispensable military mainstay.
All that should have sufficed to cause Israel’s institutions of higher learning to admit that Hezbollah is an out-and-out enemy – not only of this state but of fundamental human rights.
Nonetheless, such rationale failed to sway Tel Aviv University to cancel a scheduled address on campus by convicted Hezbollah collaborator Muhammad Kana’ane, an Israeli-Arab who served nearly five years behind bars for funneling funds and weapons information to the Iran-sponsored terrorists.
In the end, the university did cancel Kana’ane’s previously countenanced lecture but only on the grounds of “concern about harm to public order.”

IAM has occasionally reported on the radical academics who use their positions to push for politically-motivated polemics masquerading as scholarship. Shlomo Sand, a professor of French history and culture and the author of the Invention of the Jewish People and the Invention of the Land of Israel, is probably the best known in this category.
Aeyal Gross, an associate professor in TAU's Law School, is arguably a close runner-up. On his home-page Gross describes one of his research interest as critical approaches to law. Part of the family of critical, neo-Marxist approaches in the social sciences, critical law has been described in the following way:
"A family of new legal theories, launched since 1970, share commitments to criticize not merely particular legal rules or outcomes, but larger structures of conventional legal thought and practice. According to critical legal scholars, dominant legal doctrines and conceptions perpetuate patterns of injustice and dominance by whites, men, the wealthy, employers, and heterosexuals. The "Crits" argue that prevailing modes of legal reasoning pretend to afford neutral and objective treatment of claims while shielding structures of power from fundamental reconsideration. Critical theorists also maintain that despite the law's claims to accord justified, determinate and controlled expressions of power, law fails on each of these dimensions and instead law mystifies outsiders in an effort to legitimate the results in courts and legislatures."
Judging by his list of publications, it seems that critical law is his main interest, including such topics as humanitarian law in the occupied territories and queer theory. But it is Gross's contention that Israel uses its liberal treatment of gays as a propaganda tool that he dubbed "pinkwashing" that attracted global attention.
At his recent lecture at the Sociology Department of the Free University of Brussels, he repeats the accusations without providing a shred of empirical evidence. Gross can get away with discounting facts, because of the claim that critical law theorists have a privileged view of reality because they (and they alone) can uncover the "dominant legal doctrines and conceptions perpetuate patterns of injustice and dominance by whites, men, the wealthy, employers, and heterosexuals."
It is noted, that the mainstream gay and lesbian movement in Israel has rejected Gross's interpretation. This, of course, did not phase Gross, who has accused mainstream gays lesbians of the Marxist "false conciseness," namely that they have been co-opted and brainwashed by the authorities into "homonationalism."
Pinkwashing, the intellectual construct developed by Gross, has been extensively used by gays and lesbians in BDS activities around the world as reported recently by IAM.
Arguably, Gross has now joined Shlomo Sand, who made a "career" out of peddling baseless theories that delegitimize Israel. More to the point, like Sand, Gross has misused his academic position while being supported by taxpayers.

Aeyal Gross, a Professor of Law (TAU) is the intellectual architect of the pinkwashing theory postulating that Israel offers extensive rights to gays and lesbians in order to cover up its mistreatment of the Palestinians. IAM has reported that pinkwashing was enthusiastically embraced by radical pro-Palestinian activists looking for ways to prove that Israel is an apartheid state.
Indeed, the growing BDS movement put a premium on the apartheid analogy to explain why Israel deserves to be treated like South Africa. Because Israel is known for its liberal policies toward gays and lesbians including open service in the Israel Defense Force, there was a need to turn this positive into a negative. Gross, a veteran activist well versed in the logics of critical theory, understood this well. His writings inspired a long list of critical scholars, including Judith Butler, a professor at Berkeley University, among others. Traveling the intellectual food chain, it has reached activists who wanted to boycott the visit of the Bat Sheva company in New Zealand and those protested theinclusion of the Israeli Embassy in the Gay Pride Parade.
It is not often that the writings of a single academic have come to play such a prominent role in the BDS. Professor Gross is one of them.

The annual IAW events generates hundreds of articles, posts and blogs. As the sample below indicates, so far nothing dramatic has occurred this year.
However, there are some interesting trends to report. After years of pro-Palestinian activism in South Africa, the ruling party officially embraced the IAW. This is undoubtedly a success for Ran Greenstein, a former Israeli and a professor at Witts University in Johannesburg, who has led the BDS campaign.
Greenstein is not the only former Israeli faculty involved with BDS - a fact reported by IAM before. Ilan Pappe, formerly at Haifa University, has been a major figure in the BDS movement.
Even Israeli based scholars found "creative" ways to participate. For example, Anat Matar, a senior lecturer at TAU has conveniently scheduled a legitimate talk on modern philosophy during the IAW in England. She is also giving an unofficial talk on the Israel-Palestinian conflict "from an Israeli perspective," organized by a pro Palestinian group.
It is not difficult to imagine that Matar, one of the most radical faculty, will contribute to the perception of Israel as an apartheid state. As the chairperson of the Israeli Committee for the Palestinian Prisoners, Matar has campaigned tirelessly to change the statue of Palestinian security prisoners - in her opinion they should be classified as civilian protesters. In a book co-edited with Abeer Baker, Matar has accused the Israeli authorities of torture and other acts of wanton cruelty toward the Palestinian detainees.
Matar's artful scheduling is a prime example of the misuse of academic privileges by radical faculty as frequently reported by IAM.

Adi Ophir, a professor of philosophy at TAU, spent a sabbatical at Brown University where he worked hard to popularize his book The One State Condition, co-authored with Ariella Azoulay. The book advocates the creation of a binational state. Ophir is one of the most radical academic- activists who famously "found" that Israel is on the same ontological plane of evil as Nazi Germany.
A Meretz publication editor who recently wrote a review of the book, charged the authors with "selective amnesia in recounting history", that the authors "seem ignorant of what Palestinian negotiators have actually agreed to" and that the book is "totally utopian". He stated that "the authors don’t actually commit to one state instead of two. Rather, they cite some studies and artworks, while failing to outline any political process or movement that could conceivably bring about the outcome they desire: Arabs and Jews co-existing in a more cooperative socio-political arrangement. Ultimately, they provide less a vision for a better future than wishful thinking."
A recent article by Khaled Abu Toameh, Gatestone Institute, of a furious protest against a number of Israeli peace activists who traveled to Ramallah, brings to mind Ophir's utopian description of the peaceful co-existence between Jews and Palestinians. As a philosopher, Ophir should appreciate the scene of chaos and panic that engulfed the Israeli activists beating a hasty retreat. As philosophy indicates and history shows, when encounter with reality, some utopias turn into dis-utopias.

The expansive view of academic rights has enabled the alliance of radical left in Israel to engage in extensive political activism. As a rule, the liberal arts community has defended these rights.
As reported by IAM, in the most recent episode, this alliance produced a highly robust defense of the Department of Politics and Government at Ben Gurion University that was censured by the International Committee of Evaluation. Among others, the Committee found the faculty engaged in excessive political activism, in addition to producing research that was heavily biased toward the critical, neo-Marxist paradigm and published in non-mainstream radical presses. It should be noted, that the BGU in general and the Department in particular has a disproportionately high percent of radical faculty who have taken the lead in calling for a boycott of Israel and produced research proving that Israel is an apartheid state.
The reaction to Ariel Rubinstein, a professor of economics at TAU at a recent conference organized by Adi Ophir at the Minerva Humanities Center of Tel Aviv University indicates that nothing has been learnt.
Rubinstein, who describes himself as a leftist, took a dim view of Ophir and other radicals who appeared at the conference. In an Haaretz article titled "Non-Academic Activity Doesn't Belong in Israel's Ivory Towers," he calls it a "disgrace" if a speaker advocates boycott; he finds it equally distasteful when another speaker used the term "Zionist entity" to denote Israel.
The attack apparently took Ophir by surprise, prompting him to issue an equally sharply-worded response. He called Rubinstein "rude" and described his style as a combination of "arrogance and manipulation."
This amusing verbal equivalent of a food fight is not altogether surprising; radical scholars - who seem to think that they have a monopoly on critique - have proved themselves thin-skinned when on the receiving end of criticism.
The research Academic Freedom in Israel: A Comparative Perspective demonstrates that radical faculty in Israel has used the highly expansive definition of academic freedom to use its campus base for a broad range of political activity.
IAM has also published a number of papers by scholars who oppose such practices. In one of them, Ziva Shamir, the former head of the School of History at TAU, accuses radical faculty of indoctrinating students, intimidating colleagues and turning their campus offices into an unofficial branch of a political party.
As for Rubinstein's comment on the German foundations, this should come as no surprise either. IAM repeatedly reported that the German political foundations - often supported by the German government - have established a very strong presence in the Israeli academy. In addition to the veteran Heinrich Boell Foundation, Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, and Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, the more recent arrival is the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, a discussion forum for critical thought and political alternatives and a research facility for progressive social analysis, affiliated with the political party “DIE LINKE“ (The Left). The Minerva Humanities Center at TAU - the home base of Ophir and a group of critical scholars who work on various projects including, for example, the Lexicography Project, a generator of virulent anti-Israeli critique - is supported by all four with a long-term grant of the Minerva Stiftung.

IAM has occasionally reported on Emek Shaveh, co-established by Professor Raphael (Rafi) Greenberg from the Department of Archaeology at Tel Aviv University. Greenberg and some of his colleagues belong to the so-called Copenhagen-Sheffield school of thought created by critical archaeologists who reject the notion that Jews have right to the biblical Holy Land.
Greenberg and other activists in Emek Shaveh have been periodically featured in Arab media, as the Al Jazeera piece demonstrates. As expected, Al Jazeera fails to mention that the Copenhagen-Sheffield approach is considered marginal in the community of academic archaeologists. To prove the academic bona fides of Emek Shaveh, Al-Jazeera notes that Greenberg is a professor of archaeology at Tel Aviv University. As for Greenberg, he misuses his academic position by failing to tell the audience about the disputes surrounding the Copenhagen-Sheffield scholars whom many accused of being pro-Palestinian activists.
As well known, scholars have the obligation to disseminate facts and not points of view when dealing with a controversial issue. But, like many activist faculty, Greenberg is concerned with squaring theory with his political agenda. Stating that Copenhagen-Sheffield is a minor view, which has been repeatedly undermined by artifacts that point to a Jewish presence, would cast doubts about Emek Shaveh.

Aeyal Gross (TAU) whose radical views have been profiled before, has done it again. He is the intellectual architect of pinkwashing who postulates that the liberal attitude towards gays in Israel is a cover for the country's "sins" of occupation.
Most recently, he determined that the increasing popularity of vegetarian and vegan diets in Israel is also a cover for the occupation. The ever vigilant Gross, is now on a crusade to make sure that vegetarians and vegans should not be used to vegiwash the treatment of the Palestinians. As the article below indicates, Gross is worried that Netanyahu would "appropriate" the vegan issue to show how liberal Israel is, not to mention that the IDF can use its vegetarian meals for a PR campaign abroad.
Gross explains that "when one looks at veganism as a social phenomenon in Israel circa 2013 and welcomes the growing number of vegans in this country, one must also be highly critical of those who use veganism as a device to clear the consciences of those who are oblivious to the suffering of other human beings. The conclusion to be drawn from this observation is not to abstain from veganism, but rather to appropriate it as yet another element in the general struggle against oppression – of any kind."
We wish Gross luck in figuring out who among the vegans is pursuing the diet as a protest against oppression of any kind and form a group of the Black Vegans; it should be modeled after Black Laundry, a group of queers against occupation that he had co-founded in the early 2000s.

Aeyal Gross, a law professor at Tel Aviv University, has been subject of a number of IAM editorials. Gross, the intellectual architect of the so-called pinkwashing theory, argues that Israel's liberal policies toward gays are an elaborate public relations scheme to cover up its "sins" of occupation of the Palestinians. In 2011 Gross made it to the pages of the New York Times.
In April 2013, Gross lent his name and stature to an academic conference, Homonationalism and Pinkwashing Conference at CUNY's Graduate Center and the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies. The event did not include any speaker about the lives of gays in the Arab world but oddly enough, a "Queer Arab Imaginary" panelist spoke about the film "Jenin Jenin".
IAM has received a large number of emails asking why has Professor Gross adopted a seemingly unfair characterization of Israel's generous civil rights for gays.

Yehouda Shenhav, a professor in the Department of Sociology at Tel Aviv University that was hired to teach and research sociology of organizations has used his position to promote his political agenda. In the 1990s, Shenhav co-founded the Mizrahi Rainbow Coalition (HaKeshet HaMizrahit) a group dedicated to have the Mizrahim to serve as a bridge to the Palestinians. To this end, Shenhav published a book purporting to demonstrate that the Mizrhaim are "Arab Jews" whose identity was subverted by the Zionists in order to promote their immigration. In Shenhav's opinion, this Zionist approach triggered cultural alienation so deep that, upon reaching Israel, the Mizrahim had voted for the right wing Likud Party.
In spite of his best efforts, the Mizrahim were not persuaded of their cultural affinity to the Arabs in general and the Palestinians in particular. Indeed, to the dismay of Shenhav and his colleagues in Rainbow, these so called "Arab Jews" created the Shas Party, ushering two decades of a Likud-lead rule. Hardly discouraged, Shenhav plunged into a new project, the binational state. Ignoring his duty to Tel Aviv University, he wrote a book about such a binational state and has engaged in promoting the idea in different venues. His newest venture is a symposium dedicated to "imagining" a binational reality. The invitation to the event states that it would include a number of readings on an imagined binational future. Before such a state could come into being, Shenhav has also promoted the imagined return of Palestinian refugees. Shenhav gave a number of interviews on his binational state idea.
Of course, as IAM has repeatedly emphasized that, like other Israelis, academics have the right to engage in political activity as long as its within the limits of law. "Imagining" a binational utopia is perfectly legal even though some may question such a project. What is disturbing, however, is Shenhav's abuse of academic legitimacy. This is what Shenhav had to say in response to the following question in the recent interview:
What if the other side does not agree to that [binational state] either, because they don’t want us here at all?
''I think that saying such a thing is terrible ignorance. I read Arabic and I read lots of autobiographies. It’s unpleasant for me to say this, but I find more violence and much more animosity and hatred and incitement in Jewish writing than in Arabic writing.
''Who reads Arabic here? That is, by the way, one of the absurd things: How can it be that [only] 2½% of Jews know Arabic? Who is telling us about what’s happening on the other side? The Middle East experts who see everything through the sight of a rifle? We should all know Arabic. People don’t understand how much more they could understand if they spoke the language. It is impossible to explain."
Indeed, the only thing that is impossible to understand is Shenhav's propensity to manufacture facts and dismiss scholarship that does not suit his agenda. Shenhav does not name the "Middle East experts who see everything through the sight of a riffle" but it is safe to assume that these are scholars who do not agree with him.

Gadi Algazi (TAU) is a Marxist and a veteran radical activist whose efforts to provide a class-based interpretation of political reality in Israel and the region have recently led him to tackle the issue of "Israel as the villa in the jungle" - Ehud Barak's memorable comment on Israeli democracy in the mid of authoritarian regimes.
As reported before, during the early stages of the"Arab Spring" radical scholars hurried to chastise Barak for his allegedly disparaging view of the Arab Middle East. Since then, the Arab Spring turned into the Arab Winter replete with bloody carnage and unprecedented brutality.
Not cowed by this dismal reality, Algazi turned to a favorite radical tactic of painting a bleak picture of alleged class and cultural oppression of the MIzhrahim. Trying to fit the Marxist round peg of class into the ethnic square, he proclaims that the MIzrahim are the real working class poor and that their popular culture is disparaged by the upper- class Ashkenazi elites. Like virtually all his radical peers, Algazi forgets to mention that its mainly ultra-Orthodox Ashkenazi that populate the below poverty line of the Israeli demographics.
Needless to say, such a statistic will demolish Algazi's main thesis - that the Ashkenazi elites want to "purity their "villa in the jungle," that is to get rid of the Mizrahi culture which Algazi calls the "migrating birds" of the Middle East. Their weapon of choice is pesticide (homrei hadbara) directed against the "migrating [cultural] birds" that despoil the Western culture of the "villa."
For good measure, Algazi also accuses the Ashkenazi elite of trying to eradicate the Middle East culture of its Arab neighbors by using real weapons. For those who are not familiar with Marxist discourse, this statement may sound puzzling. But it is here that Algazi expresses his belief that all wars, including the Arab-Israeli ones, are capitalist wars of the well-to-do Jews against the working class Arab and Palestinian masses.
Radical scholars have tried to provide a Neo-Marxist, critical interpretation of the Arab-Israeli conflict for decades now. Algazi's newest contribution should take a place of pride in this pantheon.

Professor Yehouda Shenhav was hired to teach and research sociology of organizations at Tel Aviv University. But he has made a career on writing polemical pieces on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. He is best known for the fancy idea that the Mizrahim are actually Arab Jews who are ready to embrace their Palestinian "brothers." Since the Mizrahim showed no such inclination, he moved on to advocate a one-state solution where the 1948 refugees would have the right to resettle within the Green Line in specially constructed villages. Those who lived in cities would have to appeal to a special court to regain their previous property.
As the following "conversation" between Shenhav and Peter Beinart - a Jewish journalist who made his name by writing a book about the "crisis of Zionism" - at Columbia University indicates, neither pay any attention to Islamism. By ignoring the huge elephant in the room their upcoming conversation on "The Israeli-Palestinian Quagmire: Is There A Way Out?" sounds exceptionally shallow.
This should come as no surprise given that the organizer of the event is Yinon Cohen, a former colleague of Shenhav at TAU. Hired to a specially created chair of Jewish studies to balance the pro-Palestinian orientation of many of Columbia University's Middle East studies faculty, Cohen has faithfully towed the line of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) according to which Islamism is the new bogeyman created by "right-wing supporters of Israel."
Following the 9/11 attack, Martin Kramer, then a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Studies, wrote that, by concentrating most of their effort at criticizing Israel and avoiding the "politically incorrect" subject of Islamism, MESA-affiliated academics had provided an unrealistic view of the Middle East. It seems that nothing has been learned since then.

Aeyal Gross (TAU) a leader in the LGBTQ community, is one of the intellectual architects of the so-called pinkwashing, a theory claiming that the extensive rights enjoyed by the gay community in Israel are a ploy to cover up the mistreatment of the Palestinians.
Gross has found multiple ways to insert his theory into public discourse in Israel and abroad, including the New York Times where he was quoted on a number of occasions.
His latest venture pertains to a BBC program on gay life in Tel Aviv. As the following article suggests, the program notes the reservation expressed by "some in Israel" about pinkwashing.
A busy journalist on a foreign assignment has little time to do a thorough investigation of his or her subject. Talking to a leader in the gay community who happens to be a law professor seems like a good idea. Academic legitimacy makes pinkwashing sound like an objective finding, robbing British audience of the opportunity to understand the political agenda behind it.

Raphael (Rafi) Greenberg, a professor of archaeology from Tel Aviv University, has been the subject of IAM reporting before. Together with his colleagues - Zeev Herzog and, to a lesser degree, Israel Finkelstein - Greenberg is part of the so-called Copenhagen-Sheffield school of archaeology that questions Jewish presence in the Holy Land. Concurrently, Greenberg has been one of the founders of Emek Shaveh - Archaeology in the Shadow of the Conflict, a group that opposes digs in Jerusalem that strive to uncover such presence.
As the following article indicates, Greenberg accuses the organizers of a dig of accepting money from right-wing groups that are ideologically motivated to prove Jewish existence in Jerusalem.
This is ironic at best and cynical at worst. As IAM disclosed, Greenberg's Emek Shaveh has been funded by a number of sources that are interested in supporting the Copenhagen-Sheffield position including the Norwegian Embassy, the Dutch Cordaid and Anna Lindh Foundation. A member of Emek Shaveh board of directors is Hagit Ofran, the director the Settlement Watch project of the Israeli Peace Now movement (Shalom Achshav). His ties to the Center for Palestine Studies and the Anthropology Department at Columbia University are also telling. The Center for Palestine Studies, supported by Arab money, has been engaged in delegitimizing Israel and BDS.
Such ties belie Greenberg's effort to portray himself as an objective scholar confronting researchers tainted by "right-wing money." In Greenberg's highly ideological world-view, the old saying "what is good for the goose is good for the gander" apparently does not apply.

Anat Biletzki (Department of Philosophy at Tel Aviv University) has been a leader of the radical activist cohort. A veteran member of the Communist Party, she has spent virtually her entire academic career fighting for causes ranging from labor issues to the creation of a bi-national Jewish-Palestinian state as part of an activist-academic group that took up the call of Antonio Gramsci to change social reality.
An earlier posting by IAM showed that Biletzki expressed full satisfaction with the academic-activist project, writing: “It is thought-provoking that these properties of the political bubble—critique and radicalism—are not independent of, and actually derive from, the intellectual, academic fundamentals that have contributed to the grounding of the bubble’s political progressivism.“ In other words, “political progressivism” aims replacing liberal democracy and market economy with a political system that bears more than a passing resemblance to the former Soviet Union.
In May 2013 Biletzki was invited to lecture at the University of Bergen, Norway about Israel-Palestine: Politicizing human rights. Biletzki has a chapter in a book with the same title.
In 2007 in a SABEEL conference entitled The Apartheid Paradigm: The Challenge to Promoting Justice, Biletzki echoed the same themes (see below). Biletzki called Israel an apartheid State, meaning "occupation with elements of colonization and apartheid" because Israel does not offer equal rights to all citizens. Biletzki has complained about checkpoints, separation and the occupation. Yet she rejects the two state solution and accuses Jewish racism for the desire to separate from the Palestinians. To this effect she cited a poll that has allegedly proved Israelis as racists. Like other radical academic activists, Biletzki does not mention Arab and Palestinian objections to a one state solution, or any racist discourse in the Palestinian society. In a style reminiscent of Communist writings, she ends on a note declaring the need to fight racism and achieve a one state solution.
Biletzki was a past chair of B'Tselem, a radical group that had provided misleading information to Judge Richard Goldstone. As a result, Goldston retracted his own report, writing on April 1, 2011 in the Washington Post: "We know a lot more today about what happened in the Gaza war of 2008-09 than we did when I chaired the fact-finding mission appointed by the U.N. Human Rights Council that produced what has come to be known as the Goldstone Report. If I had known then what I know now, the Goldstone Report would have been a different document."
It is thus rather astonishing to listen to Anat Biletzki's lecture at Yale University in early November 2010 (see below) entitled "The Smearing of Israeli Peace Activists".
Biletzki and all her fellow academics-activists have lived in the Ivory Tower, supported by taxpayer money and the governments that they love to trash. They also live in liberal democracies – another subject of their radical critique – that gives them the freedom to speak out. This would not have been the case if they lived in a communist country which Biletzki has tried so hard to create.

Professor Algazi's political activism masqueraded as academics is on display again. This time Algazi traveled to Germany on behalf of the Bonn-based Institute for Palestinian Studies established to disseminate a Palestinian view of the conflict. Algazi lectured in Göttingen, Solingen, Bonn, Darmstadt, Nürnberg, Freiburg on the "Bulldozers against the Bedouins" and the Jewish National Fund (JNF) as a "settlement colonization organization".
Algazi, an expert in medieval history, is a co-founder of a project depicting the JNF as a colonial organization; the e-book project has been used by numerous pro-Palestinian groups to "prove" the colonial character of Israel. As recently reported, a copy of the book was sent to the British Prime Minister and other politicians. Algazi, like other radical faculty, has used his academic position to provide legitimacy to political activism.

Dear Professor Zuckermann,
Thanks for your feedbacks, they are always lively and provocative.
Still, we are surprised at your effort to demagogue the issue of our post, "TAU Moshe Zuckermann's Association with Notorious anti-Semites."
You should know by now, that we have no problems with you or the Swiss channel that produced the Wagner film; to the contrary, we do happen to believe that Wagner was a musical genius in spite of his odious political views.
Your other piece of demagoguery pertains to the Kantor Center; the Center is not anti-Semitic as you sarcastically allege; rather it follows a research protocol that does not mention Israeli professors who use anti-Semitics rhetoric described by the European Union Monitoring Center (EUMC) "Working Definition of anti-Semitism" as new anti-Semitism.

The radical left has a special penchant for comparing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to other atrocities. Some of the more sophisticated in radical academics use obtuse philosophical theories to this end. For instance, Adi Ophir (TAU) evokes the avant garde European philosophers such as Girogio Agamben and Jean-Francois Lyotrad to "prove" that the occupation regime is on the same ontological continuum of evil as Auschwitz. The less sophisticated grab the atrocity de jour to make the moral equivalency argument.
Orly Lubin (TAU) has reached a new low in the rush to compare. Lubin, a veteran activist with Zochrot, an organization fighting for the right of return of Palestinian refugees to Israel, when participating in discussion about the left's response to the massacre in Newton, Connecticut. As well known, a mentally ill young man killed more than twenty children and adults in Sandy Hook Elementary School.
Lubin starts by making a statement about the American skills in mastering understatements with a special reference to President Obama's speech on gun control. She goes on to say that "Hannan and me" [sic] " were furious" about the speech: "Between Jesus and god bless America, couldn’t hear the word “gun” nor the word “control.” [Hannan Hever is Lubin's life partner].
Though professing ignorance about the American ways she clearly mentions Israel: "what we are doing in the West Bank and Gaza is not that much different than Newtown." Just to make clear of her position, Lubin's picture supports a large button with "I'm boycotting the settlements" sign.
One can only hope that Lubin is showing more sophistication in her field of expertise.

Aeyal Gross, a law professor at TAU and a leader of the LGBT academic community has a penchant for perverting reality. His most famous effort in this regard is the so-called "pinkwashing" theory - the notion that Israel's liberal treatment of gays is a cover for the "sins" of occupation. In other words, the acceptance of gays is part of a clever PR plan to make Israel look better in the eyes of the international community. "Pinkwashing" became highly popular in academic LGBT circles, resulting in a conference on the subject at The City University of New York Graduate Center in April this year.
The attack on the gay club Barnoar in August 2009 that left two dead and 10 wounded led many in the gay community to imply that Israeli "homophobia" is responsible for the killings. Needless to say, this scenario played well to the larger theme of radical gay activist keen to prove that Israel is a "racist" and "homophobic" society after all.
Police revelation that the attack was triggered by an alleged rape of a minor by a gay activist and might have been linked to a criminal family, upended the "Israel is a homophobic society" story. Worse, it forced many gays to face an unpleasant truth of sexual misconduct including exploitation and rape and criminality in the community.
Rather than own up to these unpleasant facts, Gross decided to pervert reality again. As the following article demonstrates, he blames Israel's "liberal homophobia" for the mayhem in Barnoar and its aftermath. Gross, the master of the convoluted argument, finds "liberal homophobia" hiding in every corner.
Gross's real frustration is written between the lines. He laments that commentators were quick to cease on the personal revenge nature of the crime: "It was as if indiscriminate shooting at LGBT teenagers at Barnoar could be disconnected from the social structures of heterosexism and homophobia, even if it was committed by a person whose personal history fueled his hatred."
Worse, by coming out against the killings, "right-wing politicians" co-opted the gay movement and turned it into "homonationalism" described in his other article as mobilizing the gay community to support the occupation.
Gross is not the first academic activist to be blindsided by reality. As IAM reported, neo-Marxist, critical scholars rushed to welcome the "Arab Spring" as a true manifestation of democracy and one that would put the Israeli "pseudo-democracy" to shame. Gross should learn from their misfortune; by blatantly misrepresenting reality, he insults the intelligence of his readers and risks losing the remnants of his credibility.

Moshe Zuckermann (TAU, Cohn) has been regularly featured by IAM. In a former posting, IAM pointed out that the Tel Aviv University Kantor Center's annual report on global anti-Semitism failed to mention Zuckermman. In the last couple of months we heard from Zuckermman three times (see below) where he was using abusive language. In his third email Zuckermann wrote: "I never talked or wrote about the "nazification of Israel", but about the "fascization of Israel", of which you are indeed the best proof in our realm. But as you act in the best tradition of the Gestapo, it's probably true that we are talking actually about the "nazification of Israel"."
It should be emphasized that Zuckermann is wrong about the issue of "nazification;" in 2004 the European Union Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC) concluded that comparisons between Nazi Germany and Israel and other extreme expressions of anti-Israelism are a form of anti-Semitism; such "nazificstion of Israel" is included in its "Working Definition of anti-Semitism."
The European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) which replaced the EUMC in 2007 has incorporated the "Working Definition of anti-Semitism" in its legal work.
The European Union official stance on anti-Semitism casts a highly troubling light on Zuckermann's activities in Europe. Zuckermann has been sponsored by extreme anti-Semitic leftist groups in both Germany and Austria. For instance, Zuckermann is featured on the website Das Palastina Portal, owned and created by Erhard Arendt, a German convert to Islam, married to an Iranian woman who in 2012 received the Palestine Solidarity Prize from the Palestinian envoy in Germany in a ceremony held at the Rosa Luxemburg Center in Berlin. Zuckermann has been featured on Between the Lines by the notorious anti-Semite Ludwig Watzal and by Arn Strohmeyer who in March 2011 called for the boycott of Israel. Not surprisingly, they all use Zuckermann to legitimize their own positions.
Zuckermann's friends in Austria travel in the same circles. His book Antisemit ! was published by Promedia, a radical press in Vienna established in 1982 to publish books "against the grain." Johan Galtung, the disgraced anti-Semitic professor of peace studies, is a featured author. (As IAM revealed, during a conference at Tel Aviv University organized by TAU Daniel Bar Tal, Galtung launched his standard Israel bashing routine and accused Israel that during the war in Lebanon "much bigger parts were the victims of collective punishment than Lidice in Czechoslovakia, Oradour-sur-Glane in France and Kortelisy in the Ukrain", a reference to three notorious cases where the SS murdered the inhabitants and razed the villages in punitive raids). Zuckermann recently praised a Promedia book of another radical critic of Israel, Petra Wild's Apartheid and Ethnic Cleansing in Palestine: The Zionist Settler Colonialism in Word and Deed, which has "demonstrated" that Israel committed heinous crimes against Palestinians. Taken from his Sueddeutsche Zeitung article on the 5th of June and reprinted as a blurb, he stated:
"Petra Wild has written an important book. This book is important not so much because it offers the unknown, the undiscovered. Everything collected there constitutes empirical material, analyzed and interpreted, and could have been known for a long time by everyone who wanted to know it. But, because people don't want to know, or try very hard to push matters they already know to the back of their mind, Petra Wild's book is important. It serves as a quasi literary straitjacket for those who persistently look away and who ideologically refuse to look at the horrors named in the book".
In word and deed, there is no difference between Zuckermann and other anti-Semites (as defined by the EUMC) with whom he associates. But Zuckermann was not included in the Report on anti-Semitism by the Kantor Center and was not censured by Tel Aviv University. The shopworn argument of "academic freedom" clearly does not apply to his case; it makes Israel the only Western country were anti-Semites are tolerated and indeed, supported by the taxpayer. Such double standard hurt Israel's credibility when fighting against global anti-Semitism.

Prof. Galia Sabar, a senior lecturer and head of African Studies Department at Tel Aviv University is a political activist who promotes rights of African refugees to settle in Israel. For her work she received the Unsung Heroes award by Dalai Lama.
IAM has repeatedly emphasized that academics-like other Israeli citizens - have the right to engage in extra-mural activities. What attracted our attention was her claim to be promoted on the basis of her political work. Sabar did not publicize her award out of fear that it would jeopardize her promotion procedure and lamented that the university does not recognize public involvement as a legitimate factor in promotion. Amir Paz-Fuchs, another high profile activist, who brought the case of Sabar to the attention of the social science network, agreed with her, calling the case "sad."
Sabar's publications are paltry, even by the standard of a third rate college, let alone a respectable research university. Her choice of research topics is even more brow raising: in a recent article she reports on African restaurants in Tel Aviv as a measure of immigrant adaptation. Africa is a vital continent and Israeli students who choose to specialize in Africa studies deserve better than a faculty who chooses to focus on African culinary establishments in Tel Aviv.
IAM has regularly reported on activist faculty that spend their time and energies on political causes of their choice. The case of Sabar stands out because she strongly demands that the Israeli tax payer should fund her activities. Regrettably, such a view is prevalent view among many academics who, like Paz-Fuchs, are genuinely puzzled why this should not be the case.
For all those, here is something that Stanley Fish, a professor and public intellectual with a leftist pedigree, wrote in his book Save the World on Your Own Time: "I am not saying that putting pressure on South Africa or Israel or agitating for workers rights are not legitimate political actions. I'm just saying that political actions are what they are, which means that not everyone (either in the polity or the academic community) would approve them, which means that in endorsing them a university aligns itself with a partisan position, which means that sectors of the general public will come to regard the university as a special-interest lobby and decline to support it."
Indeed, this is what has happened in the United States where the neo-conservative movement rode a wave of public outrage against political activists in state (public) universities. Israeli taxpayers deserve the same consideration than their American counterparts.

On April 2013 the Kantor Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry at Tel Aviv University issued its annual report on the state of anti-Semitism around the world, "Antisemitic manifestations worldwide 2012". The lengthy document listed a large number of anti-Semitic incidents, but what attracted our attention was a short segment devoted to the growing phenomenon of comparing Israel to Nazi Germany. As IAM frequently points out, the European Union Monitoring Center's "Working Definition of anti-Semitism" considers certain anti-Zionist critique to be a new form of anti-Semitism; invidious comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany were termed "nazifcation of Israel."
It was gratifying to see that they mentioned - apparently for the first time - "nazification of Israel.' Sadly, the authors focused their attention on cases of "nazification" abroad.
While some Israeli academics such as Moshe Zimmermann (HUJ) use terms like Judeo-Nazis, pioneered by Yeshayahu Leibowitz and Israel Shahak (HUJ), others resort to sophisticated linguistic manipulations designed to create a link between the two situations. As the article from 2002 "Don't Fence Me In" by Neve Gordon (BGU) illustrates, Gordon seeks to create such an equivalency in a review of a book about barbed wires. He speaks about the "architectural similarity" between the "camps Israel created to hold the Palestinian and the concentration camps Jews were held during the Holocaust. He writes:
“Explicating and trying to understand the continued widespread use of barbed wire could have added an additional dimension to this fascinating book. For example, examining the architectural similarity and differences between the camps Israel has constructed to hold Palestinians and the concentration camps Jews were held in during the Holocaust, urges one to ponder how it is that the reappearance of barbed wire in the Israeli landscape does not engender an outcry among survivors.”
Neve Gordon knows very well that there are no concentration camps for the Palestinians, but he uses this linguistic ploy to add to the "nazification of Israel' theme.
It is not clear why the Kantor Center decided to omit Israeli faculty who have engaged in prodigious efforts to "nazify Israel."
Indeed, they did not have to look too far, as TAU Professors Moshe Zuckermann (Cohn Institute) , Adi Ophir and Ariella Azoulay (Minerva Humanities) have carried the "nazification" campaign for years.
Tel Aviv University plays a double agent, on the one hand it provides information on anti-Semitism but on the other, some of its scholars engage in what the EU considers anti-Semitism.

Radical TAU academics in the past year:
On Feb 21, 2012 in a Berlin conference of Heinrich Böll Foundation "What do Germans and Israelis have in common? What sets them apart?" Gadi Algazi [TAU, History] stated: "One could sum up what we ask of Israel: an end to its colonization politics," he said. "As long as Israel's settlement policy continues, we will not have peace in the Middle East. This is the heart of our tragedy. For that reason, I would call for economic and political pressure on Israel until it agrees to completely stop its colonization."
On 6 April 2012, in a German article "A well orchestrated hysteria" about a poem by Günter Grass, Moshe Zuckermann [TAU, Cohn] agreed with Grass that "Israel is a threat to world peace."
On May 6, 2012 in a conference held at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York, Yoav Peled [TAU Political Science] argued that the Zionist enterprise in Palestine fits the “colonialist thesis.”
On June 25, 2012 in Business Day South Africa, Alon Liel [TAU, Security & Diplomacy] wrote: "I...do my best not to buy Israeli products from the occupied territories. I don’t see why you, living outside Israel, shouldn’t have the same choice."
On June 2012 in Zochrot website, Adi Ophir [TAU Minerva Humanities] wrote about the importance of Zochrot, "the occupation has become a permanent form of control, colonial expansion clearly visible in all its brutality, de-facto Apartheid almost declared and often even formally enshrined, the integration of the Jewish space in the OPT almost complete....The dogs that barked at the Nakba commemoration event at Tel Aviv University, however, belonged to the right and were extremely loud, but our caravan went on nevertheless." (Zochrot was created to "educate Israeli citizens about the Nakba and restore the memory of Palestinian presence before 1948." In its mission statement "recognizing the tragedy is a prerequisite for ending the conflict, which also includes a return of Palestinian refugees and their resettlement in Israel.")
On June 2012 & June 2013 in TAU's LGBT conference "Sex Acher" Merav Amir and Leehee Rothschild are panelists; both are renowned BDS activists.
A journalist Ishai Friedman revealed that a TAU student named Anat Levy - one of the organizers of Nakba Memorial Day 2012 at TAU - admitted in an interview that Aeyal Gross, Anat Matar and Anat Bilezki sponsored the Nakba event.
On Sept 4, 2012 Theater director Peter Brook admitted that Anat Matar [TAU Philosophy] convinced him to cancel his participation in the International Festival for Plays of the Cameri Theatre. In her letter to him Matar wrote "I believe that decisions about cultural and academic boycott need to be taken after due discretion and not blindly...The issue with the Cameri is its decision...to support the oppression of the Palestinians by performing on their occupied land."
On Oct 10, 2012 in the German Junge Welt "Resist the zeitgeist: About Jews, German, the Middle East conflict and anti-Semitism" Moshe Zuckermann [TAU, Cohn] wrote: Israel's "act of Colonization...had led in the 1948 war for the national catastrophe of the Palestinians, the Nakba, and continues to this day."
On October 25, 2012 in the Independent Studies Program at the Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona, Ariella Azoulay [TAU, Minerva Humanities] said: "Israel's creation was a catastrophe for both Jews and Arabs." Azoulay urged Israelis to take a number of steps. "First, past history needs to be rewritten to make clear that Jews were only a tiny minority in Palestine - only six percent- and did not deserve a state of their own. Second, the term Palestine rather than Israel should be used. Third, Jews must start the process of "forgiveness" by acknowledging that they made Palestinians into refugees by violence."
On Nov 16, 2012 in the Munich Salam Shalom Palätina-Israel Working Group event "Israel's occupation is a colonial project: the settlements as a business;" Gadi Algazi [TAU History] lectured "The lucrative connection of Colonialism and capital in occupied West Bank."
On Nov 18, 2012 in Haaretz (Hebrew) Shlomo Sand [TAU, History] wrote "Why are they shooting missiles at us?"They "are refugees and the descendants of refugees of those lands on which we live. 65 years have passed and they still remember... What's more, the injustice done to them has never been recognised by us...the force of the memory of their disaster."
On Nov 21, 2012 in an email to members of Coalition of Women for Peace from Rachel Giora [TAU, Linguistics] "The world cannot stand by when Palestine is once more battered to death," Giora and Yehouda Shenhav [TAU Sociology] circulated a petition "The inaction of the Western governments is further proof of their indifference to their electorates’ wish to stop Israel from perpetrating yet another massacre against the Palestinian people."
On Dec 15, 2012 in Truthout "Starving for Recognition: The Plight of Palestinian Political Prisoners" Anat Matar [TAU Philosophy] complained that "in Western media reports Palestinians are portrayed as security risks rather than political prisoners, and as “militants” and “terrorists,” rather than resistance fighters."

Shlomo Sand, professor of history at TAU has hit on a very profitable formula; write an outrageous book guaranteed to be picked up by every pro-Palestinian and anti-Semitic website, travel widely to spread the "gospel" that Jews are an invented people (The Invention of the Jewish People) that have never existed in the Middle East (The Invention of the Land of Israel) and become an international star.
Dressed in his customary black outfit, the short but highly self-assured and pugnacious former postal clerk and Matzpen member has treated us to yet another self-revelatory book, How and When I Stopped Being Jewish. If anything, his latest creation is even more muddled and convoluted than the previous ones. In an interview for the book, he laments that "I suffer from people who don't understand me" because of his alleged deep revelations about the Jewish non-history. Still, Sand is resigned to such misunderstandings as he cannot write "like Yair Lapid."
Sand explains the decision to stop being Jewish by claiming that there is no such thing as Jewish secular identity - an argument that he purportedly proved beyond reasonable doubt. He goes so far as to argue that none of the things that scholars and popular culture label Jewish, including the so-called "Jewish sense of humor" is not really Jewish.
Be it as it may, Sand's real goal in renouncing Jewish identity is political. Continuing the Matzpen line, Sand declares that Israel is a racist state subjugating its Arab citizens; he compares it to the apartheid state of South Africa and even to Nazi Germany.
Sand denies that Israel would kill its "unwanted Arabs" the way Germany exterminated its "unwanted Jews" but asserts that Hitler won because the Nazi racial theory is used by many Jews in contemporary Israel: "Yesterday it was simple physical characteristics such as blood or facial structure. Today it’s DNA." Worse, in his view, using the Holocaust to bolster Jewish identity and the standing of the Jewish state, is the ultimate victory of Hitler.
Sand's pseudo-scientific concoctions would have been laughable, if it was not for the fact that they are made possible by the Israeli taxpayers. His faculty position gives him legitimacy and the free time needed to write and travel abroad, a fact that he readily admitted in his recent talk in Tel Aviv.
Once again, it is Sand who is laughing all the way to the bank, but it is the Israeli academic community, whose scholarly standards have been downgraded here, who is paying a heavy price.

The Left Party's branch in the northern German city of Bremen has staged pro-Palestinian events in the splendid Villa Ichon, a site operated by the local Cultural and Friendship Association. The series of seminars are offered by a forum called "Discussion Group Middle East."
The April 9 event where Professor Rudolph Bauer discussed his book, Who Can Save Israel? A State at the Crossroad created a public stir when an Israeli couple where denied entrance. The Bild published an account of the case, which provoked a response from Arn Stromheyer, a pro-Palestinian activist. Stromheyer makes the standard charge favored by the radical left in Germany, namely that Israel and its allies have tried to silence all critics of the Jewish state by defaming them as anti-Semites.
All this would have been rather unremarkable if it was not for the fact that Stromheyer uses Moshe Zuckermann, a professor of history at Tel Aviv University, to legitimize his position. He explains that in his book Antisemit?, Zuckermann has used the same argument. To impress his readers, Stromheyer boasts that Zuckermann’s work is not a mere “pamphlet,” but a book published by the respectable Vienna press.
Of course, both Zuckermann and Stromheyer are aware of the European Union Monitoring Center’s “Working Definition of anti-Semitism” which considers anti-Zionism as a new form of anti-Semitism. The document, which was incorporated into the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, makes a careful and reasoned distinction between legitimate criticism of Israel and anti-Zionism. For instance, “nazification of Israel,” that is comparison between Israel and Nazi Germany is classified as anti-Zionism. Zuckermann in particular, has demagogued the issue to score points with his pro-Palestinian audience in Germany. Indeed, Zuckermann, a frequent flier on the Israel – German route, is due to appear at the “Discussion Group Middle East” scheduled for the end of May. He also plans to attend a lecture in Berlin to discuss the second volume of his essay Against the Spirit of the Times. Not surprisingly, Zuckermann presents himself as a victim of the Israeli authorities that allegedly try to silence his critique.
There is a certain irony in the situation. Had Zuckermann taught in Germany, he would have been much more careful; German faculty are considered government employees and are bound by a rather strict code of intramural and extramural speech. The anti-Semitic excesses of the Holocaust has weighted heavily on both the public and academic discourse. Holocaust denial is illegal; the Constitutional Court has issued a ruling on what should be considered a proper work of scholarship. The German Constitution makes a distinction between freedom of speech and academic freedom; faculty are held to a higher standard than laymen.
But in Israel where academic freedom is extremely expansive, there is virtually no limit on faculty members. They can compare Israel to Nazi Germany or claim that Jews are an invented nation. They can cease researching in the subject fields for which they were hired; they can use their free time to either engage in full time political activism or write polemical work on the Israeli -Palestinian conflict. And, of course, they expect the taxpayer to fund their salaries and, in many cases, their oversees trips where they can delegitimize Israel.

Professor Adi Ophir, a veteran political activist and a self described critical philosopher who heads The Lexicon for Political Theory of The Minerva Humanities Center (MHC) at Tel Aviv University, has turned the Lexicon into an incubator of radical scholarship. Working together with Dr. Ariella Azoulay, head of the Photo-Lexic group of the Lexicon, who has "visualized" Israeli Nazi-like treatment of Palestinians.
Ophir and Azoualy have used their travels to discuss their new book on a binational state. As the following interview indicates, they believe that giving up the territories will not solve the problem of occupation and the alleged injustice that Zionism perpetuated on the Palestinians. In their view, the only just solution is a radical change of the "regime" and the creation of a binational state of Jews and Palestinians.

Yehouda Shenhav (TAU) has been very busy recently. The Israeli Foreign Ministry - in conjunction with Justice for Jews from Arab Counties (JJAC) - has declared its intention to seek justice for Jewish refugees from Arab countries as part of a settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The JJAC, who has the support of the World Sephardi Congress and the American Sephardi Federation has been founded in 2006 by S. Daniel Abraham - a leading philanthropist and peace activist who spent a small fortunate pushing for the Oslo peace. The distinguished Canadian jurist Irwin Cotler, made a compelling case for the JJAC in his report "Jewish Refugees from Arab Countries: The Case for Rights and Redress."
From the very beginning, Shenhav was adamantly opposed to the Foreign Ministry-JJAC initiative, as indicated bellow. He argued that this is a ploy to detract from the demands of the Palestinian refugees and, more to the point, that there were no forced expulsion of Jews in the Arab world. Shenav is strongly supported by Reuben Abergil, the former head of the Black Panthers who appeared with Shenhav in the short documentary. On several occasion, Shenhav implied that the Sephardi activists in JJAC are dupes of the Zionist and Israeli colonial project.
Shenhav is no stranger to controversy; he has urged creating a binational state and a full right of return for the Palestinian refugees. In fact, as IAM reported, Shehnav wants to rebuild the Palestinian villages in Israel and set up courts that would adjudicate the return of property in cities.
He is best known for his effort to reclassify the Mizrahim as "Arab Jews" in order to promote an alliance between them and the Palestinians as a prelude to his binational state. In his book on the subject Shenahv described Jews from Arab countries as "victims of Zionism" who were alienated from their Arab roots and made "voting fodder" for Likud and other right-wing parties. This is not surprising , as Shenahv is an enthusiastic practitioner of "false consciousness," a construct invented by Marx to explain why workers support bourgeois parties to the detriment of their class interest. In Shenaha'v version of "false consciousness" the Mizrahim have been compelled to vote for Likud because of Zionist brain-washing.
What is more surprising is Shenahv's short memory. In an effort to convey the depth of the "Zionist perfidy," his book uses unsubstantiated charges that the Mossad fomented attacks on Jews to scare them into leaving en mass. But to hear Shenhav tell it now, the Mizrahi refugees are an invention of the Foreign Ministry.
Israeli taxpayers have been left holding the short stick in the affair. Hired to teach and research sociology of organizations, Shenhav has used his tenured position to write about topics that support his political activism. It is even more regrettable that some of the writings are laced with elaborate conspiracy theories that should have no place in the academy.

Gadi Algazi (Tel Aviv University) is no stranger to controversy. As a member of the secretariat of Hadash - Democratic Front for Peace and Equality and Tarabut-Hithabrut, he is a passionate supporter of a binational state that would also provide justice and equality for all its citizens, an euphemism for a communist system.
Algazi, has been a subject of a number of IAM postings on account of his slanderous representations of the Israeli political system during lectures abroad where he uses his academic affiliation. Of course, Algazi has the right to express his opinion as a private citizen - a right that he exercised during the recent Land Day event in the Galilee village of Sakhnin.
As the Jerusalem Post reported, a few thousand protesters carrying Palestinian flags – and some Syrian flags – marched around the village, with many chanting “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” and “with blood and fire, we will liberate al-Aksa,” among other chants. The demonstrators also attacked the Al-Jazeera TV crew, calling them foul names and accusing them of being "Zionist agents."
Against this background of violence, which also occurred on previous years - and which was legitimized by his presence - Algazi spoke about his vision for a peaceful binational state, where everyone will live in harmony and equality, to be achieved through a struggle. Needless to say, Algazi asserts that such a future can materialize only if the State of Israel - which he accuses of being at war with its citizens and of humiliation of the poor, among other egregious crimes - can be dismantled.
To make his point, Algazi misrepresents virtually every argument; for instance he calls the Haifa University demographer Arnon Soffer a "racist" because he is "busy counting babies and for whom real people's lives do not count."
His narrative of the Bedouin village of Al Araqib is equally misleading; the dispute between the nomadic Bedouins and the State has been litigated in courts for many years. A recent court ruling stated that Oren Yiftachel, a political geographer from BGU who served as an adviser to the Bedouin plaintiffs, exaggerated the amount of land in dispute. Nomadic populations who need large swath of territory to sustain their traditional life-style has presented a serious challenge to governments in Europe and beyond, who need to adjudicate between the indigenous populations and the growing urbanization. While this poses a humanitarian dilemma, Algazi's heated rhetoric does not do justice to the problem.
Finally, like many of his fellow radicals, Algazi juxtaposes Israel, which he perceives to be totalitarian and oppressive, with the new Middle East. He dreams about living in a state "that is not a fortress, but is a part of a democratic Middle East, a Middle East that belongs to its peoples, not its rulers."
It is here that Algazi's blind spots are exceeded only by what IAM defines as the "radical hypocrisy of the radical left." Like many in the radical fraternity, Algazi does not admit that the Arab Spring turned into Arab Winter, with human rights abuses ranging from killing of Christians to rape of women.
We understand that Algazi is a professor of history, but it would behoove him to take a crash course in contemporary Middle East affairs.

This is the latest in Shlomo Sand's interviews with the Iran Press TV. As the following text shows, Sand, using his credentials as a professor at Tel Aviv University, gives legitimacy to the Iranian propaganda against Israel.
Sand: Why this village? Because you see I'm working in Tel Aviv university, I am a professor of history in Tel Aviv university. And Tel Aviv university is built on the land of this village that disappeared in the 30 of march 1948. Now it was a friendly village, it wasn't against Zionist colonization, I'm speaking till '48 and the university is built on this land and also my apartment in the same area, in the same neighborhood. And I think that to write about the land of Israel, to me the land of Israel, I'm obliged also to confront myself with the fact that I am working in a place that has no sign that this village existed.
Host: Your previous book was against an idea of a Jewish people, this one is against the idea of a homeland from the Mediterranean to the river Jordan.
Sand: After the first book I was attacked that I tried to, you know, to cut the affinity between Jews and the land of Israel and I tried to show in this book that the holyland, I mean Palestine, Judea, was never the homeland for the Jews because you have to understand that Muslims have not a homeland, Christians have not a homeland, Jews have not a homeland

Ariella Azoulay (TAU) has been a subject of IAM posts before, most recently for comparing the fate of Palestinians to that of Jews during the Holocaust. She is a fellow at the Minerva Humanities Center at TAU and now an assistant professor of comparative literature and modern culture and media in Middle East Studies at Brown University.
Azoulay's "creative" manipulation of pictures and texts has been on display on other occasions, including a lecture at the prestigious Museum of Contemporary Art in Barcelona. In an hour long, somewhat rambling speech, titled "Potential History", Azoulay delivered her usual damning critique of all things Israeli, bolstered by an array of manipulated images. But, apparently buoyed by the Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street and mass protest in Europe, she was ready to declare the coming of a new age, when "potential history" will be born, when "all those on both sides who opposed Partition would be unified."
In order to expedite such "end time" scenario, Azoulay urges the Israelis to take a number of steps. First, past history needs to be rewritten to make clear that Jews were only a tiny minority in Palestine - only six percent- and did not deserve a state of their own. Second, the term Palestine rather than Israel should be used. Third, Jews must start the process of "forgiveness" by acknowledging that they made Palestinians into refugees by violence.
After distributing a brochure with the appropriate images to the audience, Azoulay presented the global context of her "potential history." She declared that the globe "belongs to nobody, which means everybody, and the UN has divided it into nation-states," adding that nation-states are not necessary. Indeed, the goal should be to disperse power of "good people everywhere;" this can be achieved by social-networks that restore information that was removed from consciousness, from the public space. Azoulay, an ardent feminist, made it clear that women would play a prominently role in her imagined utopia.
The audio-tape of the lecture ended before the Q&A session; one can only guess that the Spanish audience must have been bewildered by Azoulay's strange performance.
It is equally puzzling that she is now on the faculty of Brown University, known as a center of serious scholarship. The only plausible explanation is that the appointment is related to her high profile trashing of Israel. If this is indeed the case, Azoulay follows a well established trend whereby radical Israeli academics with dubious publishing records are "rewarded" with plush visiting position or permanent employment abroad.

Yehouda Shenahv (TAU) has parlayed his tenured position in the Department of Sociology -where he was hired to research the sociology of organizations- into producing a string of political polemics on the Israeli-Palestinians conflict. In one of his books, Shenhav "proved" that the Mizrahim (Jews from Arab countries) are really "Arab Jews" who were alienated from their Palestinian brethren by European Zionists. Shenahv believes that returning the Mizrahim back to their true Arab Jewish identity is a prerequisite for creating a bi-national state.
Shenhav, an ardent advocate of bi-nationalism, has been alienated from the Left whom he accuses of "Ashkenazi disdain" for Arabs and Mizrahi Jews. To demonstrate his commitment, he joined Balad, a nationalist Arab party in Israel, telling an audience there that he is an Arab Jew and that the party is "his natural political home."
Shenhav, who believes in his own research, hopes that other Mizrahim will follow him in an effort to build a bi-national state. Indeed, inhis latest book Shenhav outlined a future Palestinian-Jewish federation with a canton-like structure and urged a full right of return for Palestinian refugees that included a restoration of their villages and urban property.
Although among the estimated one thousand Jewish voters for Balad, virtually all are Ashkenazim, Shenhav is optimistic that the "Arab Jews" would eventually return to their true identity, as per his books. And why not? he was promoted on the basis of this type of research and received rave reviews from some of his peers.
Tax payers may rightly question whether in this case the Ivory Towers turned into Alice in Wonderland, but Shenhav will march on under the flag of academic freedom into utopia.

IAM reported on George Galloway's interview with Shlomo Sand (TAU) on Press TV, an English language Iranian media outlet that Galloway was more than happy to speak to the Israeli professor whose book The Invention the Jewish People has been all the rage in anti-Israeli circles.
However, as the following article indicates, the controversial MP from the Respect Party, a radical Islamist-leftist group, walked out on a Oxford Union debate telling the audience that he does not wish to have any contact with Israelis.
The organizers accused Galloway of racism, but the MP simply mimics the behavior of his Iranian patrons. Israelis like Sand who trash their country or deny the Holocaust are welcome by Tehran, but those who want to have a rational debate are rebuffed.
For his part, Sand is doing all he can to ingratiate himself with Galloway and other detractors of Israel. During a recent event at the School of Oriental and Asian Studies at London University, he called Israel “a shitty nation” and “the most racist society in the world”. As the Oxford Union incident demonstrates, the only Israelis that the regime and his propagandist Galloway will tolerate are "useful idiots," like Shlomo Sand or Ilan Pappe. When asked on Twitter who he would sit with, Galloway responded that it depended "on whether you support the racist state of Israel or not...I sit with Prof Ilan Pappe happily."

The controversy over the Israeli and Palestinian textbooks has put a spotlight on Daniel Bar-Tal (TAU, professor of political psychology), whose long-time left-wing political activism destroyed the legitimacy of the project.
IF there is more evidence needed to prove Bar Tal's habit of mixing scholarship with politics, the call to "Liberal Jews" speaks for itself.
Characteristically, Bar-Tal has no qualms about twisting reality to support his point of view; for instance, he speaks about right-wing American Jews like Sheldon Adelson who supports right wing causes in Israel. He conveniently omits the fact that left -wing Jews such as George Soros spent a small fortune supporting the leftist New Israel Fund, J-Street and other like-minded groups. Those who are familiar with the American Jewish community know well that it is divided along the same lines as Israeli Jews. In other words, for "every Adelson there is a Soros."
This is just one more example of Bar Tal's lack of credibility and integrity as a person and a scholar.

Shlomo Sand, (TAU) recently declared: "The Israeli society today is one of the most racist societies in the western world". adding it is "racist, colonialist, ethnocentric and veritable apartheid state."
Such charges would have surprised the readers of the Freedom House annual report on freedom and democracy around the world. The just released 2012 index gives Israel high grades for political freedom, freedom of the press, civil society and other democratic requisites. In comparison, the Palestinian Authority, Gaza and countries in theregion ranked much worse.
But Sand - known for his cavalier attitude toward empirical reality as his books, The Invention of the Jewish People and the Invention of the Land of Israel attest- cannot be bothered by facts and figures. To the contrary, a shrewd judge of the public discourse, Sand understands that the more outrageous the claims, the better the chances of making himself known. Indeed, by Google's count, Sand is the most famous professor at Tel Aviv University.
Sand is not the only academic to smear Israel. For years, the radical academic fraternity have repeated the charge that Israel is an apartheid state. The libel is now so well rooted that, according to Google, it seems to outweigh the Freedom House report. It is a sad irony that not only do taxpayers provide the salaries of radical scholars but also support the campaign to tarnish Israel's standing abroad.

The social science community is engaged in a hot debate over the report on Israeli and Palestinian textbooks coordinated by Professor Bruce Wexler from Yale University. The Ministry of Education and other government officials rejected the report as “political work,” and, Professor Daniel Bar-Tal (TAU), the lead Israeli scholar, threatens to sue the Ministry for “slander.” The just released study (see below) would be probably analyzed and scrutinized; Whatever the final verdict, there are a number of points about the process of creating the study that need to be addressed.
First, the study was commissioned by the Council of Religious Institution in the Holy Land (CRIHL) in Jerusalem and carried out through a grant from the U.S. State Department. The CRIHL moderator, Canon Trond Bakkevig, a prominent clergy in the Norwegian Lutheran Church, has tried to portray himself as an objective mediator between Israeli Jews and Palestinians and the CRIHL lists an impressive array of religious groups - Christian, Jewish and Muslim- on its masthead. However, prior to assuming his current position, Bakkevig was the moderator of the public issues committee of the World Council of Churches (WCC); in 2005, a statement posted by UNISPAL reads "the WCC governing body encouraged the Council's member churches "to give serious consideration to economic measures that are equitable, transparent and non-violent" as a new way to work for peace, by looking at ways to not participate economically in illegal activities related to the Israeli occupation. In that sense, the committee affirmed "economic pressure, appropriately and openly applied," as a "means of action". Bakkevig commended the Presbyterian Church USA for initiating steps toward Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) and urged the other 347 member churches of the WCC to follow suit. Quoting a verse from the Book of Luke, Bakkevig described it as a duty of Christian churches to push Israel toward peace." An article by the Ecumenical News International explained, "this is about activities related to the illegal occupation of the West Bank and not a general policy with regard to Israel," Canon Trond Bakkevig, the moderator of the WCC's public issues committee, said when he presented the statement."
Is not entirely clear whether the US State Department, which dissociated itself from the report, was aware of Bakkevig’s leading role in the BDS movement. Nor is it clear whether the project coordinator, Bruce Wexler, a professor of psychiatry at Yale University realized Bakkevig’s pioneering role in BDS. Claiming to be middle-of-the road, this is a surprising choice of partnership.
Second, designating Daniel Bar-Tal as researcher of the Israeli textbooks is highly questionable. Wexler defended his decision, stating that the researchers have adopted an innovative fully scientific methodology, but it is well known that suppositions that underpin social science research ultimately dictate the outcome. Bar-Tal was one of pioneers of the theory that Israelis cannot conclude a peace treaty with the Palestinians because they suffer from a Holocausts trauma or/and a Masada syndrome. This “it is all in their head” explanation is quite handy since it has absolved Bar-Tal from considering the role of the Palestinians in hindering the peace process. Whenever comparisons between Israel and the Palestinians are unavoidable, Bar-Tal has turns to the methodology of his mentor, Herbert Kelman, a professor of social psychology at Harvard University. Kelman, a theorist of conflict resolution, urged to adopt symmetry in analyzing the conflict protagonists, a strategy that Bar-Tal perfected in his studies.
Equally to the point, the choice of Bar-Tal violates a key principle in the process in designing expert panels charged with qualitative evaluation of educational materials in liberal arts. Recognizing the difficulties, in 1975 the Joint Committee on Standards for Educational Evaluation – a consortium of leading educational groups – developed standards for educational evaluation. The Committee urged a number of standards including a strict scrutiny of the objectivity of potential panel experts. Among others, politically activist experts were not welcome, so as not to create the perception of bias in the work of the panel. (Evaluation Standards Committee. Standards for Evaluation of Educational Programs, Projects and Materials. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1981).
As a member of the political party Meretz, Bar-Tal scores high on the scale of political activism. Hired to teach early child development at the School of Education at TAU, Bar-Tal switched to researching adult attitudes toward the conflict soon after receiving tenure. As IAM noted, Bar-Tal, a veteran peace activist, is one of a number of TAU scholars who found a convenient way to combine their position with political work. Among others, Bar-Tal was a co-editor of the Palestine-Israel Journal (PIJ), a platform for a radical critique of Israel. As the Director of the Walter Lebech Institute for Jewish-Arab Coexistence at Tel Aviv University, Bar-Tal, who became the chair of the Academic Committee, helped organize a 2006 conference where Johan Galtung served as a keynote speaker, in spite of the latter’s well known anti-Semitism. Indeed, Bar-Tal sat on the podium next to Galtung who launched into his standard Israel- bashing routine. Reprinted in the PIJ, it accused Israel that during the war in Lebanon, "much bigger parts were the victims of collective punishment than Lidice in Czechoslovakia, Oradour-sur-Glane in France and Kortelisy in the Ukrain" (a reference to three notorious cases where the SS murdered the inhabitants and razed the villages in punitive raids). Surely, Bar-Tal was aware of Galtung’s mendacity, but the comparison with Nazi Germany was left unchallenged. In 2012 Galtung alleged that the Mossad was linked to the recent massacre in Norway and quoted from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion; he was roundly denounced and fired by the Swiss Academy of Peace. In spite of IAM calls, however, Bar-Tal refuses to condemn Galtung or apologize for letting the latter to engage in “nazification of Israel” at the 2006 conference.
Bar-Tal's penchant for finding exclusive faults with Israel led him to write an open letter during the 2008 IDF operation in Gaza. He stated, “my trust in humanity has been weakened seeing the ease in which human beings rally for war, exercise blind patriotism, express desire for vengeance…and develop insensitivity to human life.” Interesting enough, Bar-Tal never lost trust in humanity when Israeli civilians were targeted by suicide bombers, when “ordinary Palestinians” lynched two Israeli soldiers and raised their bloody hands in a sign of triumph, or when Hamas used its position in Gaza to repeatedly shell Israeli territory.
Even this short survey makes clear that Wexler was ill -advised to invite Bar-Tal to serve on the panel. Notwithstanding assurances of scientific objectivity, qualitative evaluation in social sciences is never free of the human element, as the Joint Committee recognized. At the very least, Bar-Tal’s political agenda creates a perception of bias, casting a shadow on the project.

Yehouda Shenhav (Sociology TAU) was hired to teach sociology of organizations. Like many of activist faculty, once tenured, he switched his "research" to topics that promote his political agenda, namely the creation of a binational state. His first effort was to publish a number of articles and a book where he "proved" that Jewish immigrants from Arab speaking countries (Mizrahim) are really Arab Jews; like the Palestinians, were victimized by the Zionists and forced to adopt an identity that made them hostile to Arabs. In the parallel reality that Shenhav, a self-proclaimed critical sociologist, occupies, empirical finding indicating that the Mizrahim vehemently rejected the label of Arab Jews, do not matter. Though his work received acclaim from his paradigmatic peers, empirical reality saw a critical bloc of the Mizrahim vote for the ultra-Orthodox Shas Party, a stalwart in the Likud led coalition for more than a decade.
Shenhav's next research venture was to prove that the international and regional realities are ripe for a binational Palestinian-Jewish state. In an essay published just before the Arab Spring he "found" that the region was ripe for a post-Westphalian order, his term for a new era where sovereign states are passe. Indeed, Shenhav called for the creation of a binational state with Jewish and Palestinian cantons. Living in a parallel reality, Shenhav can ignore the recent developments, including the rise of Islamism in the wake of the Arab Spring. As the following interview makes clear, Shenhav apparently is not aware that neither the nationalist Fatah nor the Islamist Hamas are ready to embrace his post-Westphalian vision.
Under the permissive reading of academic freedom at Tel Aviv University, Shenahv, a tenured professor, can pursue "research" that catches his fancy. IAM repeatedly reported that Shenahv is one of several faculty members that parlayed their positions into virtually full-time political work. Tel Aviv University's leadership owes the taxpayers and their political representatives an explanation why such an arrangement has been tolerated for so long.

Shlomo Sand (TAU) has been featured by IAM numerous times, he is now making the rounds to promote his Invention of the Land of Israel, a sequel to his Invention of the Jewish People.
Of course, nothing in Sand's compilation of themes is new; they have been espoused in anti-Semitic literature and hundreds of crackpot websites. What gives Sand legitimacy is his tenured position at Tel Aviv University. This much is clear, since he is always introduced as a Tel Aviv University historian.
Western societies expect faculty of respectable academic institutions to do better than to recycle Internet conspiracy theories. According to Google, Sand is the best known professor at Tel Aviv University, something that should concern its leaders and the taxpayers who support the higher education system in Israel.

Professor Aeyal Gross (TAU,Law), who is considered the intellectual father of "pinkwashing," has returned to the subject in the context of the Israeli election. He charges that Israel's liberal policy toward gays is a ploy to hide its "sins" of occupation. The broad array of civil and political rights that gays enjoy in Israel - which Gross himself lists, as well as the robust condemnations by assorted politicians of anti-gay sentiments - are all an elaborate plot to mask the violations of human rights against the Palestinians and others. In other words, the welcome that gays receive is not part of Israeli and Jewish values; it is a cynical political maneuver and a hollow gesture unless the rights of the Palestinians and asylum seekers are not recognized.
For those who have difficulties in understating the convoluted thinking behind "pinkwashing," a short history lesson is in order. Michel Foucault, the founding father of critical theory and the most revered name in its pantheon, was a homosexual with a taste for S&M sex, which he praised in his writings; he also visited gay baths in San Francisco where he contracted AIDS.
Foucault was a great admirer of Ali Shariati, the Iranian philosopher and activist whose ideas inspired the Iranian revolution. When Ruhallah Khomeini emerged as the face of the revolution, he wrote glowing tributes to the Ayatollah and the new political order in Iran. Foucault was so keen to witness this "new spiritual awaking" that he visited Iran as a journalist where, much to his horror, he discovered that the new regime punished homosexuals by public hangings, a practice that continues to this day.
Still, Foucault did not mention the Islamist treatment of homosexuals and other egregious violations of human rights in Iran, not to concede that Western societies, which he had vilified, may be more liberal and humane than his idealized "spiritual awaking" in Iran.
Foucault died of AIDS in 1984 but many of his disciples such as the critical philosopher Judith Butler, a lesbian activist and a harsh critic of Israel, perpetuates Foucault's unprecedented intellectual hypocrisy. They defend gross violations of human rights and suppression of women in Muslim countries on the grounds that these are cultural artifacts which Westerners have no right to criticize. When faced with a problem such as Israel's progressive treatment of gays, they resort to accusations of bad faith, hence "pinkwashing."
Aeyal Gross has actually taken such intellectual hypocrisy a step further; in a 2011 exchange on an IAM posting he denied support for the "pinkwashing" theory (see below). Such a stand, however, is hard to maintain in the Internet era as the following Haaretz article makes clear.

IAM has reported that radical scholars have compared the IDF's treatment of the Palestinians to that of Jews during the Holocaust. Neve Gordon (BGU) implied that the fence around Gaza is akin to that around concentration camps in Europe, and B'Tselem ran adds in Haaretz depicting the Gaza Strip as large ghetto and/or concentration camp behind barbed wires. Adi Ophir, the head of the Political Lexicon Project at the Minerva Humanities Center (TAU) declared that Israel operates at the same ontological plane of evil as Nazi Germany. Ariella Azoulay, his frequent collaborator, an MA art program instructor whose title at the Minerva Humanities is Director of Photo-Lexic Research, has manipulated photographic images to prove that the Nakba and the occupation are the Holocaust of the Palestinians. Unfortunately for Azoulay there is no evidence to support the "Nakba-as-Holocaust" theory, but the ever resourceful expert in visual arts relied on text to make sure that the audience does not miss the connection.
In the image below, she writes that the Palestinians "force the soldiers to chase them as if they were chasing (Jewish) prisoners under the Nazi regime." The fence,

Working as phone installer for the post office, Shlomo Sand, then a Matzpen member, could only dream that one day he would become an "expert" on weighty international issues. These days, Sand feels empowered enough to dismiss the eminent political scientist Samuel Huntington who coined the phrase "clash of civilizations," describing the coming struggle between militant Islam and the West. Indeed, Sand goes so far as to claim that the Islamic regime in Iran is not about religion but about nationalism.
This would come as a surprise to every expert on Iran, not to mention to the Ayatollahs in Tehran who imposed a strict Islamist code on the country while dismantling every edifice of Persian nationalism erected by the Shah. But then, Sand is not known for fidelity to facts as his Invention of the Jewish People and Invention of the Land of Israel attest to.
Indeed, it was the Invention of the Jewish People that made Sand an international star and saw his book translated into twenty one languages. The notion of Jewish people descending from the Khazars is not new. As a matter of fact, the theory has been invented by a number of anti-Semitic writers almost a century ago and subsequently circulated by the myriad of anti-Semitic websites.
What made the book stand out among the competition is Sand's legitimacy as a professor at Tel Aviv University. It is a safe bet that had Sand been still a post office worker, he would be dismissed as just one more crank. Sand acknowledges the importance of academic position in the following interview; he states that he was not really "courageous," waiting until after tenure to pursue controversial issues. A perusal of his list of publications indicates that since 2004, by then a full professor, Sand, hired as an expert on French history and culture, devoted his energies to proving that the Jews- as- Khazars have no legitimate claim to the Holy Land. Not incidentally, Sand's comrades in Matzpen had fiercely objected to national state for the Jews.
As IAM repeatedly reported, the expansive academic freedom made it easy for Sand and other activist faculty to misuse their position to push a political agenda. Sand, of course, has done better than most, globetrotting to promote his work and enjoy his celebrity. While Sand travels around the globe, the Israeli taxpayers who pay his salary are taken for a ride.

For years now radical academics and their liberal supporters have warned that Israel is becoming a McCarthy Land where scholars are not allowed to voice their opinions; some like Nurit Peled Elhanan (HUJ), predicted that they would be sent to a "camp" for speaking out.
Far-fetched as the notion of an academic Gulag archipelago in the Negev is, it has caught the imagination of many on Western campuses, an incubators for projects to delegitmize Israel. The massive response of professional associations and individual scholars in the case of the Department of Politics and Government at Ben Gurion University - a true first in the annals of academy - is just one of the manifestations of such trends.
Amid all the alarms about the "end of academic freedom as we know," it is easy to forget that Israeli academy has been built around a most expansive sense of autonomy. IAM's Academic Freedom in Israel: A Comparative Perspective makes this very clear. We hope that the report will be widely read and discussed.
In the meanwhile, updates on how some of the most radical faculty have fared are in order. The case of Rachel Giora, from the Linguistics Department and Anat Matar from the Philosophy Department at Tel Aviv University is illustrative in this context.
On January 01, 2013 the Faculty of Humanity at TAU has organized a conference in honor of Giora (see below). In his introductory remarks, Dean Eyal Zisser lauded Giora for her contributions to the Israeli academy. At the end of the proceedings, Dr. Anat Matar, a close friend of Giora and fellow radical, spoke about the need to join academic and political practices.
As the IAM report indicates, Giora stands out even among the radical core of activist faculty. By their own account, Giora's and Matar's activism goes back decades, and ranges from involvement with Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement to encouraging draft resistance.
In 2010, Alan Dershowitz, who delivered the keynote address at the Board of Governors at Tel Aviv University, used the case of Giora and Matar to argue that Israeli academic freedom is too excessive.
Mark Tanenbaum, a major contributor and member of the Board demanded that the university fire Giora and Matar, but resigned when Joseph Klafter cut off the vote. Giora and other faculty used harsh language to castigate Dershowitz, denouncing him as an enemy of free speech.
If anything, the widely publicized incident has prompted Giora and Matar to increase their political activism, as IAM noted. Matar took very public credit for pressuring the director Peter Brook to go back on his promise to participate in a workshop of the Cameri Theater; she and others organized the campaign because the Cameri performed in Ariel. Though the Knesset passed the BDS legislation, Matar is not perturbed, as she and other radical scholars seem to dismiss the probability that either the state or the university will enforce the law. Should steps against Matar be taken, the international academic community can be mobilized again.
Celebrating Giora and tolerating Matar is just one of the many examples of the extensive academic freedom in Israel. As Dershowitz noted, such behavior would not be acceptable in his own university, Harvard, not to mention public universities in Germany, Great Britain and the United States.
But in the distorted discourse on Israel, Giora and Matar are victims of McCarthyism.

Professor Yehouda Shenhav (TAU) is at it again. Hired to teach and research the sociology of organizations, he has virtually abandoned his field in order to concentrate on various aspects of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
As IAM reported, the self-proclaimed critical sociologist, has tailored the specific topics to his political activism. Upon joining the Mizrahi Rainbow, a group dedicated to bringing together Jews from Arab countries and Palestinians in 1990s, Shenhav wrote a book and a number of articles on Arab Jews, his name for the Mizrahim to prove that they, like the Palestinians, were victims of Zionism. Shenhav's endeavor failed miserably, as his target audience went on the create the Shas Party, a reliable coalition partner of the right-wing Likud.
Undaunted, in the mid-2000s, Shenhav launched a new project to create the intellectual infrastructure for a bi-national state. In Shenhav's vision this would be a "post-Westphalian" state where national boundaries will be replaced by a confederation of Jewish and Palestinian cantons. Unfortunately for Shenhav, the Arab Spring unleashed Islamist forces which have little appreciation to the advanced post-national, post-Westphalian concepts.
Finding the present and the future difficult, Shenhav turned to the past. His new project - a research group sponsored by Van Leer Institute - promises "to 'bring back' the empires into research and debate over Zionism and thus release this debate from a unique historical case reflected in the concept of Zionist exceptionalism. In other words, the group aspires to locate the discussion of Zionism explicit within the global matrix of imperialism." In plain English, Shenhav wants to reinforce the view that Zionism was a colonial movement aided and abetted by the imperial powers of the day.
The group membership is tailor-made to produce such findings. In addition to such stalwarts as Hanna Herzog and Hannan Hever, there are a number of Shenhav's doctoral students, Manar Hassan, Yuval Evri, Areej Sabbagh and Benny Nurieli. In addition to privileging Shenhav's students, it is signal to potential candidates in the Sociology Department that radical scholarships pays off.
Lending a hand to Shenhav's imperial project is Ronen Shamir, the former head of the Sociology Department at TAU. Shamir's own critical views of Israel are well - known. Following the Mavi Marmara incident Shamir wrote an open letter to denounce the Likud government; he also blamed it for a broader effort to undermine Israel relations with Turkey. "The present-day Israeli regime is not interested in peace. The Israeli establishment has become prisoner to an ever growing public of Jewish fanatics -- informed by messianic visions of Greater Israel... the Israeli regime is firmly grounded in a religiously guided, ultranationalist and xenophobic worldview, one which is bound to bring calamity to the whole region, including Israel." He further stated that "Turkey has been systematically demonized by the Israeli government. Relying on and further fostering well-embedded stereotypes of Muslims among Israeli Jews, Turkey -- abstracted and depicted as a homogenous social-political entity -- is now portrayed as the natural ally of militant and radical Islamists around the world." Shamir was also emphatic in making a distinction between the "few fascist brigands [who] burnt the flag of Turkey in front of its embassy in Tel Aviv, [and] a thousand of us stood in front of the Ministry of Defense, denouncing the attack on the Mavi Marmara". This obsessive one-sided desire to blame Israel while ignoring the Islamist Prime Minster Tayyip Erdogan's continuous erosion of democracy, not to mention the harsh treatment of Kurds, makes Shamir an ideal addition to the Van Leer study group.
IAM reported a Van Leer -sponsored group trying to revive communism in the region, asking why should resources needed to study the real and profound changes in the Middle East be devoted to such a marginal topic. Reflecting on Shenhav's project, the answer becomes clear. Focusing on resurgent Islamism in the Middle East, including Turkey would amount to an admission that Israel alone is not to blame. Faced with such an abysmal prospect, radical scholars and their boosters at Van Leer have chosen to ignore reality.

The English- language Iranian owned Press TV has been known for its crude attacks on Israel. A 2012 report of the Anti-Defamation League accused Press TV of broadcasting anti-Semitic conspiracy theories as legitimate news and of providing a platform for assorted Holocaust deniers and anti-Semites. In the same year the Press TV license to broadcast in Great Britain was revoked.
In order to become more "respectable," Press TV has availed itself of the services of Dr. Anisa Abd el Fattah, a former editor of the Middle East Affairs Journal. Luckily for Abd el Fattah, she has been able to use the writings of Israeli scholars to "prove" that Jewish connection to the Biblical homeland is a "Zionist myth." Shlomo Sand's books, Invention of the Jewish People and Invention of the Jewish Land comes in handy. As IAM reported, Sand spoke on Press TV, and his Invention books are a mainstay of the propaganda services run by the Iranian Foreign Ministry.
Looking further afield, Abd el Fattah found two other Tel Aviv University academics - Israel Finklestein and Zeev Herzog - who fit the bill. To recall, the IAM posting on the Silwan dig indicated that they and other scholars at the University's Department of Archaeology are followers of the so-called Copenhagen-Sheffield School; these self-described critical archaeologists reject the mainstream view of the Biblical origins of Judaism.
Indeed, Abd el Fattah is happy that "Jewish researchers such as Shlomo Sands and others are revealing the truth about the Zionist hoax that led to the establishment of Israel in Palestine." But she is puzzled by the fact that "Muslim and Arab scholars are not addressing these issues;" in her view, this would help to undermine the "century old Zionist myth of a historic Jewish people and a homeland in Palestine."
There is a simple explanation why Muslim and Arab scholars stay away from the subject. Islam is inextricably linked to Judaism through Abraham- denying this link may end their career or worse - create a Salman Rushdie reaction.
In spite of all their fulmination against Israel, Press TV and Dr. Anisa Abd el Fattah should be grateful for a country in which academic freedom and taxpayers allow the likes of Shlomo Sand to thrive.

Professor Moshe Zuckermann (TAU, Cohn) is on the move again, this time visiting Hamburg. Hosted by the Communist "Assoziation Daemmmerung" and comrade Susann Witt-Stahl, a pro-Palestinian activist.
Zuckermann is very popular in leftist, pro-Palestinian and pro-Iranian circles in Germany, as IAM reported, because of his radical critique of Israeli policy and his support of a bi-national state. His argument that Israel has used the "Holocaust industry" to manipulate the international community and oppress the Palestinians has been welcomed by both the radical left and the radical right.
During his appearance in Hamburg, Zuckermann discussed his new book Wider den Zeitgeist in which he evoked the theme of the "treason of intellectual," a reference to the duty of intellectuals to stand up to totalitarianism. This is hardly surprising as Zuckermann has always portrayed himself as a lone intellectual facing down the state.
What is truly new is his harsh attack on the decision of the leftist faction Die Linke in the Bundestag to fight anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. IAM reported that in 2004 the European Union's Monitoring Center (EUMC) drafted a "Working Definition of anti-Semitism in order to fight a resurgence of anti- Semitism masquerading as anti-Zionism. In 2009 parliamentarians from dozen of countries meeting in London pledged to uphold the EUMC document; this so-called London declaration has inspired a broad-based parliamentary movement.
But in Zuckermann's opinion, the leftist faction decision was "ridiculous" and a "scandal." He explained that the German left decided to follow the London proclamation out of a "narcissistic" desire to leave its political isolation to a misguided sense of "German sensitivities" of accusations of anti-Semitism. As a result, they have played into the hand of a repressive and violent Israeli regime.
In his condemnatory zeal, Zuckermann has apparently overlooked a contraction of his own making: why would this allegedly brutal government not only allow the good professor to trash Israel but also pay his salary at Tel Aviv University-- a position that enables him to write his polemical books instead of doing out research. IAM - on behalf of the Israeli tax payers - hopes that the university does not cover his trips abroad.

As previously reported by IAM, the archaeological dig at City of David in the Silwan neighborhood has become a battleground between traditional and critical archaeologists.
Like their critical peers in liberal arts, critical archaeologists reject the "Zionist narrative", the claim of traditional archaeology that Jews were rooted in the Biblical Land of Israel. Critical archaeology - also known as Biblical minimalism, or the Copenhagen School - was launched by a number of archaeologists: Niels Peter Lemche, Thomas L. Thompson (University of Copenhagen), Philip R. Davies, and Keith Whitelam (University of Sheffield). In a book entitled The Invention of Ancient Israel: The Silencing of Palestinians History, Whitelam claimed that traditional archaeologists excavated sites with a view of creating the link between modern Israel and its Biblical homeland.
The critical Copenhagen School found followers among faculty of the Archaeology Department at Tel Aviv University - Israel Finkelstein, Zeev Herzog and Raphael Greenberg. Greenberg was among the founders of Emek Shaveh: Archaeology in the Shadow of the Conflict, a group of archaeologists and community activists. Its mission statement asserts: "Our fundamental position is that an archaeological find should not and cannot be used to prove ownership by any one nation, ethnic group or religion over a given place. We, the members of Emek Shaveh, are dedicated to changing the view according to which the ruins of the past as tools in the service of a national struggle [sic]. We oppose attempts to use archaeological finds to legitimize acts that harm disadvantage communities."
Greenberg and members of Emek Shaveh have been particularly upset that Elad, described as right-wing NGO, has funded, via the Israel Antiquities Authority, the City of David excavations. Over the years, they have initiated a number of actions against the Silwan dig.
The current tension stems from an agreement reached by the Department of Archaeology at Tel Aviv University and the Israel Antiquities Authority to conduct the excavations. Emek Shaveh organized a petition against Tel Aviv University to terminate the arrangement. Posted on the Emek Shaveh site, the petition carries the signatures of dozens of prominent scholars from around the world and some well known radical and leftist Israeli academics such as Bernard Avishai, Louise Bethlehem, Naomi Chazan, Sidra DeKoven Ezrahi, Yaron Ezrahi, Amos Goldberg, Galit Hasan-Rokem, David Shulman, and Zeev Sternhell. Comments by some of the Israeli signatories imply that, by refusing to terminate the contract, Tel Aviv University is putting itself in danger of some unspecified BDS action.
The Emek Shaveh archaeologists' appeal to the international academic community follows a similar action by the Department of Politics and Government of Ben Gurion University. As IAM commented, the speedy response of the community was possible because, for decades now, the campuses have served as incubator of anti-Zionist sentiments that put Israel under scrutiny that spared other countries.
The City of David petition bears out this point. It is not clear whether the signatories read Emek Shaveh's mission statement to the effect that "an archaeological find should not and cannot be used to prove ownership by any one nation, ethnic group or religion over a given place. " If so, would they have express similar indignation over excavations in France or Russia aimed at finding historical roots to the French and Russian nations? Given that critical archaeology of the Copenhagen School applies to Israel only, the answer is a resounding no.

Anat Biletzki, recently retired from the Department of Philosophy at Tel Aviv University, has been a leader of the radical activist cohort. A veteran member of the Communist Party, she has spent virtually her entire academic career fighting for causes ranging from labor issues to the creation of a bi-national Jewish-Palestinian state. It comes thus as a surprise that in her retrospective essay Bubble, Biletzki sounds a somewhat pessimistic note with regard to her life work.
She uses Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus to discuss the notion of a bubble- a solipsistic creation of the mind - to discuss the concept of a political bubble. Biletzki defines this bubble as an ideational projection of the political self into a certain sphere of social reality; a “social-political world is made up of countless, yet still identifiable bubbles that engage with one another relationally and associatively- that is to say, there is an inherent disconnect of political identity between groups that is aptly portrayed by the bubble metaphor—separate but possibly touching, visible to one another but afflicted with various degrees of blindness.”
Moving on to place herself –a scholar-activist- in the “bubble world,” Biletzki dwells on a certain contradiction in her “bubblehood.” On the one hand, she is a member of the Ivory Tower bubble, a somewhat pejorative term denoting a willful disassociation from society. On the other hand, she is part of an activist academic bubble that took up the call of Antonio Gramsci to change social reality.
There are two steps in creating the academic- activist project. The first is derived from, the “intellectual, academic fundamentals” by which Biletzki means critical theory and social-cultural radicalism. “The bubble’s modus operandi is nothing if not critical. Criticism, in certain well-known quarters, provides the means but becomes the end for the bubble’s agenda. Viewing everything outside the bubble as open to critique, inhabitants of the bubble censure far more than the simple targets—the powers that be or conventional political authorities—that have been traditional objects of political unrest. Indeed, all institutional authorities, along with their yea-sayers and cheer-leaders, are dissected in critical discourse: government, of course, and also the courts, the police, and the media. More significantly, the culture itself (its agents and participants) are [sic] brought up for critical analysis and subsequent reproach.” Indeed, Biletzki expressed full satisfaction with the academic part of the project, writing: “ It is thought-provoking that these properties of the political bubble—critique and radicalism—are not independent of, and actually derive from, the intellectual, academic fundamentals that have contributed to the grounding of the bubble’s political progressivism. “ For those not well versed in the critical lingo, “political progressivism” aims replacing liberal democracy and market economy with a political system that bears more than a passing resemblance to the former Soviet Union.
The second step is reshaping other bubbles in the image of the bubble inhabited by radical activist scholars. But the difficulty of changing reality outside the radical bubble gives Biletzki a pause. She recalls three bubble-bursting episodes; in 2004 conference in Jerusalem, Judith Butler, a leading critical philosopher, declared that the tens of thousands of progressive Jews such as Jewish Voice for Peace or the Tikkun community will silence “a much smaller number of AIPAC supporters. She sadly reflects that eight years later, AIPAC is strong as ever.
A March 2009 conference in Boston, attracted 350 scholars and activists supporting the One State Solution (OSS), a capacity crowd, creating “gratification and optimism that energized the conference’s participants; “only two years earlier supporters of the OSS could all fit into a phone booth. “ Here again, the conference did not create much momentum for OSS, leading Biletzki to comment that “350 people do not make a revolution.”
Even the signature Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, calling for such actions towards Israel to force it out of the territories, did not deliver as promised, in Biletzki’s view. While activists forced the closing of the Ahava store in London, the OECD—the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development—invited Israel to join and co-signed an accession agreement.
These and other disappointments lead Biletzki to pose the Lenin question- “What is to be done?” Her answer is highly compelling.
Biletzki admits that there were some who counseled moderating the bubble. “One recommendation often made towards members of the bubble is to soften the critique and moderate the radicalism, thereby being more relevant to effecting change.” Yet she rejects this suggestion out of hand. In her opinion, “the change needed can only be attained by reaching outside the bubble while insisting on the ethical and critically political principles that justifiably create its internal import.” Even by the standards of the famously vague critical philosophy, this is more than a platitude than a blueprint for action. Biletzki admits as much: “I do not contend here that one can draft a straight, unproblematic line connecting the intellectual-academic sphere and that of action, political action, so to speak, by merely engaging in political activism of sorts. Such a step does not address the problem of bubblehood; it can even reinforce the divorce between bubble mentality and the polis accentuating the difference between politics “on the ground” and bubble-talk about politics.”
Yet, at the “end of the analytical day,” - in her words- Biletzki, retreats to her bubble, pronouncing it to “splendid possibility of stepping out of a bubble.“ Referring to the movie Examined Lives populated by pantheon of critical philosophers - Peter Singer, Martha Nussbaum, Slavoj Žižek, Cornel West, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Michael Hardt, Avital Ronell, and Judith Butler. She writes that at the end of the film, “Butler has done her philosophy; the realization of the other has been the acting out of her “lecture.” Stepping out of the bubble—was she ever in it?—she has enacted her philosophy morally and politically. This is how she does philosophy; this is how she does politics. This is simply what she does.”
For someone who just admitted that the people who live in a bubble can suffer from blindness, this declaring is nothing short of delusional. Biletzki needs to be reminded that she and all her fellow philosophers have lived in the Ivory Tower bubble, supported by taxpayer money and the governments that they love to trash. They also live in liberal democracies – another subject of their radical critique – that gives them the freedom to do all the trashing. This would not have been the case if they lived in a communist country which Biletzki has tried so hard to create.

Gerardo Leibner, a lecturer in the Institute for Latin American History and Culture, Tel Aviv University, is described as a scholar of Latin America. This is somewhat of a misnomer, as Leibner, who received his doctorate from Tel Aviv University in 1999 has a very meager academic record.
Even a perfunctory look at his political activities reveals an extremely busy schedule. He is a member of a number of pro-Palestinian groups, an organizer of anti-Israeli petitions and participant in marches on behalf of workers, Mizrahim, Palestinians and other "oppressed." He is also a prolific writer of articles on the theme "Israel can do no right and the Palestinians can do no wrong," a genre pioneered by the radical fraternity. The following article is a case in point.
Israeli policy is described as harsh, colonial and brutal. Hamas is referred to as the "conservative government in Gaza;" its role in the bloody expulsion of Fatah from the Gaza Strip in 2007 not mentioned.
At a time when many governments in Latin and South America have soured on Israel, this caricature of Israeli foreign policy is not helpful, especially as Leibner signs using his university position. Though some would expect academics who evoke their institutional affiliation to present more balanced views, it is understood that Leibner is exercising his right to extramural speech.
More difficult to fathom, however, is the fact that Leibner and other radical faculty have used their academic appointment to pursue full time political activism. As IAM repeatedly asserted, by tolerating such behavior, TAU's authorities have undermined taxpayers, students and the academic standing of Israel abroad.
The Leibner case is illustrative of how such faculty has depleted the research capital of Israel. Professor Zvi Medin, the founder and first director of the Institute for Latin American History and Culture, was a distinguished scholar, whose research was internationally recognized. In 1999- 2001 he served as the President of the International Federation of Latin American Studies and in 2002 was awarded Aquila Azteca, Mexico's highest award for foreign scholars.
Leibner and his cohorts who either publish in marginal, critical scholarship venues - as the International Evaluation Committee of the CHE noted with regard to the Department of Politics and Government at Ben Gurion University - or cease doing research, can never attain the prestige of the founding generation. Israel's below average performance in the social sciences is a testimony to this development.

Ariella Azoulay, head of the Photo-Lexic group in the Lexicon for Political Theory at the Minerva Humanities Center at Tel Aviv University, has been a subject of a number of past editorials.
The Lexicon is one of the three projects, headed by Adi Ophir, a frequent co-author of Azoulay. The Lexicon is described as an "encyclopedia in the making;" group members subject accepted political concepts to a critical interpretation and redefinition of these concepts to broaden their horizons and shed light on current conditions.
The Photo-Lexic group looks at pictures in a context: on the one hand, it is a "possible instrument of power and government;" on the other hand, it "challenges sovereign power and disrupts its field of vision. "Furthermore, the group seeks to rethink central concepts of political philosophy from the point of view of the ruled rather than the ruler."
Stripped from its high-minding soundings critical rhetorical, the Political Lexicon Project has served as a incubator for some of the most radical critique of Israel and a leader in field of its delegitmization. As well known, the European Union Monitoring Center's Working Defining of anti-Semitism, indicates that some forms of anti-Zionism cross the boundaries between legitimate criticism such as opposing Israel's hold on the territories and delegitimization.
Ophir has been one of the intellectual fathers of what the Working Definition describes as "nazification of Israel," as he "found" Israel to be on the same ontological plane of evil as Nazi Germany.
Azoulay has contributed her share in "visualizing" a Nazi-like treatment of Palestinians. On one occasion, she photographed a group of Palestinian prisoners guarded by IDF solders as "torture." Her traveling exhibition is full of images that evoke the imagery Nazi-like brutality toward the Palestinians.
Undoubtedly, she will be well prepared to to promote her theme during the forthcoming Edward Said Memorial Conference supported by the Lutfia Rabanni Foundation, one of the multitude of projects funded by Saudi and Gulf Countries money and the Treaty of Utrecht Foundation, which promotes cross cultural contacts to further global peace.
Azoulay will be featured alongside such critical philosophers /radical critics of Israel as Judith Butler and Etienne Balibar. In fact, her work of "nazification" fits well with the agenda of the conference "to promote justice, self-determination and equality. "
For Azoulay and her critical peers, "nazification of Israel' goes beyond pro-Palestinian propaganda . The Photo-Lexic project states it seeks to recreate reality from the point of view of the ruled, not the ruler. The treatment of the Palestinian Nakba - as - Holocaust provides a perfect visual symmetry, in line with the concept of inversion or reality that is key in critical philosophy.
The Dutch media that would, in all likelihood, cover the event, and the citizens of Utrecht who may visit the conference, probably do not understand such complexities. They will look at Azoualy's images and assume that it is reality. And herein lies a problem identified by the EUMC's Working Definition: criticism of Israel turned into pernicious anti-Zionism/ anti-Semitism.

Professor Rivka Feldhay, (Minerva Humanities Center, TAU) became the new cause celebre of radical academics and their liberal supporters. IAM reported that Professor Feldhay was invited by the German Embassy in Tel Aviv to participate in a Round Table featuring Prime Minister Netanyahu, the German Chancellor Angela Merkel and two more researchers. Feldhay was "disinvited" when her political background became clear to Israeli government officials. Embarrassing as the incident was, it would have been more embarrassing to have Feldhay taking her seat at the round table.
In an Haaretz article, Feldahy explained that she had decided to travel to Berlin because, as the head of Minerva Humanities Center - a recipient of considerable donations from numerous German foundations - she is an expert on scientific relations between the two countries. In its numerous reports on the Center's faculty, IAM found that their only expertise was radical critique of Israel. For instance, Adi Ophir, one of the Center's stalwarts, had been in the forefront of "nazification of Israel," i.e. comparing Israeli treatment of Palestinians to that of the fate of Jews in Nazi Germany. It is probably not a coincidence that Feldhay's doctoral supervisor, Professor Yehuda Elkana was one of the pioneers of the "nazification of Israel" approach.
Feldhay further explained that she was targeted because of her objection to the government's policy in the territories. She asserted that her "disinviation" has grave implications for "democracy, academic freedom and freedom of expression in Israel. " Feldhay's argument is specious at best, it demonstrates ignorance of academic freedom, at worse, it aims to deceive the public. Faculty does not have a pre-ordained right to participate in non-academic events, in which the government of Israel has an input. Government officials were duty- bound to nix her participation to protect the Prime Minster from a diplomatic imbroglio.
As the IAM Academic Freedom in Israel in Comparative Perspective (English) indicates, in Germany, Great Britain and the United States there is much more balance between national interests and academic freedom. The National Security Adviser to President Barak Obama would not have approved a round table where a radical critic of American foreign policy, say, Noam Chomsky, planned to participate. In Germany, college professors are considered government employees (Beamte), a position that limits their extra-mural speech. In the United States, academic staff of public (state) universities are accountable to boards of directors who are appointed by state governors.
It is not the first time that Feldhay took an extreme stand on academic freedom. In a keynote address in Tel Aviv University in 2010, Harvard University's Alan Dershowitz, the world renowned authority on civil and academic rights, remarked on the expansive academic freedom in Israel. He denounced two Tel Aviv University radical activists - Rachel Giora and Anat Matar (who both call for the boycott of Israel) - as exemplifying the spirit of unbridled freedom that, in his opinion, harmed national security and academic integrity. Feldhay was one of three signatories in a letter sent to the Tel Aviv University president Joseph Klafter, attacking Dershowitz in most severe terms.
Unfortunately, Dalia Karpel's "Professor Feldhay, an Honorary Member of the Black List" in Haaretz uncritically repeats Feldhay's allegations. Worse, Karpel describes Feldhay as one of the "most senior Israeli scholars;" in reality, Feldhay's academic record is mediocre, even by the rather modest standard of the Israeli social sciences.
This is not the first time that Haaretz has served as a mouthpiece for radical academics and their liberal supporters. By engaging in what seems like political advocacy, Haaretz shortchanges its readers on two counts.
First, the Israeli press treats Israel in isolation from other countries. As Academic Freedom in Comparative Perspective (Hebrew) demonstrates, the Israeli universities and faculty enjoy much broader freedom than their counterpart in the Germany, Great Britain and the United States. At the very least, a comparative perspective would have made it clear that there is a profound difference between a legitimate criticism of Israeli occupation and "nazification of Israel." According to the European Union Monitoring Center, "nazification of Israel" and other radical forms of criticizing Zionism is a new form of anti-Semitism. The EUMC's Working Definition has been adopted by the European Union, which would make research by the Minerva Humanities Center unacceptable in Germany and Great Britain.
Second, according to Yaacov Bergman, an expert on comparative higher education, Israel's expansive academic autonomy has undermined Israel's standing in the world, especially in the underperforming social sciences. Bergman contends that broad freedom hampered global competition by shielding the academy from accountability to the taxpayers and their elected officials, preventing the formulation of OECD -like goals and a drive to excellence.
It is crucial that the media use the case of the Department of Politics and Government in Ben Gurion University and the Feldhay incident to embark on the long- overdue debate of Israel's academic freedom in a comparative context. This is harder than parroting the mantra that Israel is a land of McCarthyism, but necessary to understanding of such a complex issue.

IAM offers occasional commentary under the title of Radical Hypocrisy of the Radical Left. The following article by Rachel Giora and Yehouda Shenhav (TAU) is a case in point.
The well- known radical activists have used extremely inflammatory language to create a distorted portrait of Israeli action to stop the barrage of rockets from Gaza.
Of course, Giora and Shenhav, like all Israeli citizens, have the right to express their opinions and paint whatever pictures of reality they choose. Although, one may expect a more measured extramural expression from a university instructor, they have no contractual obligation to do that.
But their petition raises a different issue. Giora, Shenhav and many of their radical peers have routinely used this type of overheated, if not downright hysterical rhetoric for years. Had a right wing professor used such languages, radical academics and their liberal supporters would have responded with a barrage of criticism, denunciations and worse.
But we are still waiting for anyone in this camp to take Giora and Shenhav to task. Herein lies the hypocrisy.

The following comment arrived in response to our previous posting:
One can only infer that what was planned was a showcase illustrative of a program of academic collaboration (Minerva) between Germany and Israel. It was turned into a paranoid intervention by Security(!) officials and now by your equally embarrassing approval. This failure to honor a performance of academic fellowship deserves condemnation, not defense. The intervention is an insult to Netanyahu, and to the rest of us. For a change, you should be on the other side! Professor Elihu Katz
Professor Katz is correct to state that Minerva is a collaboration between Germany and Israel, but would like to say we disagree with him on a number of other points.
We demonstrated many times, the program -mainly under influence of Adi Ophir,- has became the center of radical critical scholarship whose goal's seems to be to tarnish the image of Israel which go beyond legitimate criticism of the state's policies. Ophir and many of his disciples specialize in what can be defined as "nazifcation of Israel," that is making invidious comparisons between the behavior of Israel and that of Nazi Germany.
Mindful of the phenomenon of radical anti- Zionism, in 2004, the European Union Monitoring Center (EUMC) included anti-Zionism in its "Working Definition of anti-Semitism". "Nazification of Israel" is listed among the seven categories of the EUMC's "Working Definition" which has been adopted by the EU. IAM reported that the "Working Definition" was at the center of a law suit brought by Ronnie Fraser against the British University and College Union (UCU). Fraser is represented by the distinguished British jurists Anthony Julius, a leading expert on anti-Semitism and academic freedom. During the recently concluded trial, Julius contended that "nazification of Israel" as opposed to legitimate criticism of Israel should not be protected by academic freedom. In Germany, the EUMC definition has been routinely used in the court of law.
As we pointed out, working with her mentor Yehuda Elkana and on her own, Feldhay has engaged in a fair share of "nazification of Israel." Ironically, had she worked in Germany or Great Britain, her academic freedom on the subject would have been curtailed by the EUMC ruling. The Executive Summary of Academic Freedom in Israel in Comparative Perspective makes the point clear.
The involvement of the National Security Adviser General Amidror is fully justified. The event was organized by the Foreign Ministry and not the Minerva Center, The "disinvitation" of Professor Feldhay was clearly a failure of the Embassy to do due diligence, leading to an embarrassing incident; to have her on a panel with Prime Minister Netanyahu and Angela Merkel would have been a far greater embarrassment. Among its many duties, the National Security Adviser has to manage the public image of Israel at a time where a systematic and well- organized campaign of delegitmization - based on the type of virulent anti-Zionism defined by the EUMC - has been waged against Israel. For comparatives purposes, it would have been inconceivable for Thomas Donilon, the National Security Adviser to President Obama to approve a round table with Angela Merkel featuring Noam Chomsky or some other radical critic of the United States.
Finally, let us make a larger point about Professor Katz's feedback. For months now, the IAM has tried to put the debate on academic freedom in a comparative perspective. We have repeatedly quoted the Executive Summary of Academic Freedom in Israel in Comparative Perspective in hope that the academic community could discuss the issue in a more informed manner. Academic freedom is not unlimited; the models of balancing academic autonomy with social and national responsibilities - have been developed in Germany, Great Britain and the United States - countries with long academic traditions - should be beneficial to the Israeli discourse.
It saddens us to report that those who wrote us did not bother to read the Executive Summary; at best they try to shame us, as Professor Katz did, or as Or Kashti in his Haaretz blog suggesting that IAM is being an Im Tirzu wolf hiding under the academic equivalent in sheep's clothing; at worse they call us unprintable names.

A Roundtable with Prime Minister Benjmain Netanyahu, Angela Merkel and a dozen of Israeli and German academics in Berlin created a stir in the academy. Dr. Rivka Feldhay, part of the Minerva Humanities Center at Tel Aviv University, who was asked to attend by the German Embassy in Israel, was "disinvited" because Netanyahu did not want to appear with a radical leftist scholar known for her harsh critics of Israel. The Israeli side failed to do due diligence on Feldhay, resulting in an embarrassing incident.
It gave the academic community and Haaretz an opportunity to lament the attack on academic freedom and warn about the specter of McCarthyism. Joseph Klafter, the president of Tel Aviv University took the unseal step of sending a letter to the Minister of Education to register his complaint.
This knee- jerk reaction is all the more troubling because the Roundtable was a diplomatic event sponsored by the Foreign Ministry and its embassy in Berlin. Israeli scholars - whatever their political orientation - have no self-ordained right to appear in state- sponsored functions. Academics have to earn such rights through respectable scholarship and fair- minded commentary on political reality.
Feldhay's academic and extramural record fail to meet this standard. An authority on science and culture, her publishing record is extremely modest; in spite of nearly three decades as faculty, her only book published by a reputable press is based on her doctoral dissertation.
What Feldhay missed in research, she made up by full- throttled political, activism which she learned from her PhD supervisor Professor Yehuda Elkana from the Hebrew University. Elkana's engagement with the "nazification of Israel" project followed closely the path pioneered by Yeshayahu Liebovitz and Israel Shahak. In 1988 Elkana, a Holocaust survivor, denounced what he called the "political manipulation" of the Holocaust, for right-wing reasons, the visits of youths to the Yad Vashem museum and worse: his personal testimony to the mistreatment of Palestinians, "bulldozers burying people alive, soldiers breaking the arms of civilian population, including children." At a memorial to Elkana at Van Leer Institute, Feldhay gave a passionate tribute "to my teacher Yehuda - a man of many qualities."
Feldhay's take on political reality followed closely that of her mentor. In 2001 she signed a petition calling on the international community to deploy a peacekeeping force to protect the Palestinian population in the territories from the Israel Defense Force. In 2008, Feldhay was a signatory an open letter appreciation for students who refused to serve in the territories .
In 2012, during the debate on the Department of Politics and Government at Ben Gurion University, Feldhay criticism of the CHE was based on an egregious misrepresentation of facts. She wrote that the "university proceeded to grant the department three new positions and meticulously supervised the process by which the candidates were chosen, and the follow-up team expressed a deep appreciation for the steps taken by the university in response to the criticism that was voiced. Finally, after the positions were filled, the CHE follow-up team commended the department and the university management for their implementation of the recommendations and added that they expected the new approach, aimed at diversifying the curriculum and research methods, to continue to guide the department in the future, based on the assumption that such a change inevitably occurs through a gradual process."
As well known, the follow-up team which included Professor Thomas Risse, a member of the original committee, found that only one of the new hires fulfilled the original recommendation. Worse, in a rebuke to its hiring practices, the Department was urged to adopt a proper recruitment procedure used in Germany and the West.
As for the president of Tel Aviv University, he should not have rushed to denounce the government. It would behoove him to look into the Minerva Humanities Center to find out why the Israeli taxpayers are supporting a group of academically mediocre scholars whose only claim to excellence is Israel bashing. Surely, academic freedom in a public university is not limitless and requires an accountability to the public stakeholder.

Professor Moshe Zuckermann (TAU, Cohn Institute) is traveling again, due to speak on November 30 in Munich, as a guest of the Munich Campaign against a War with Iran in cooperation with Salaam Shalom Palestine Israel, one of the many fronts collaborating with the Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The title of his address is "Is Israel Existence Threatened. Illusion and Reality."
As reported before, Zuckermann has made a career of denigrating Israel. His theme is always the same; Israel's fear of its neighbors is not derived from a realistic reading of the situation, it is an illusion born out of the Holocaust and what he calls a "security fetish." Hence, the Israeli leaders are irrational similarly to the Iranian mullahs.
Naturally, as a citizen of a democratic country, Zuckermann is entitled to such views, no matter how convoluted they are.
But, predictably, The Munich Campaign against a War with Iran presents Zuckermann as an Israeli academic expert, clearly a key asset for a group desperate to couch its propaganda in academic legitimacy. Like the former KBG, allies of Iran have turned to what Lenin described as "useful idiots" - journalists and academics eager to plead Iran's cause to unsuspecting Western audiences.
Zuckermann, like his radial activist peers, was hired to teach and research in the field of his expertise only to switch to writings on the Middle East conflict. The Executive Summery of Academic Freedom in Israel in Comparative Perspective, makes clear that such practices are not tolerated in public universities who are accountable to taxpayers. By comparative standards, Zuckermann's behavior is a clear abuse of academic freedom. As long as Tel Aviv University does not have to account for the way it spends public money, Zuckermann can carry out his duties as a "useful idiot", courtesy of the Israeli Treasury.

In their excerpt from their book The One State Condition: Occupation and Democracy in Israel/Palestine, Adi Ophir and Ariella Azoulay (TAU) describe in almost lyric language the "condition" for a one-state - "a Middle Eastern democracy not based on negation of the Middle East; one which embraces the Mizhrahi Jew, woman and the Arab, the Muslim and the Christian." There is something touching in this utopian vision- first offered by Judah Magnes, Martin Buber and other scholars at the Hebrew University who created the pacifist Brit Shalom.
Utopias die hard and one may conclude that Ophir and Azoulay are just the latest in a long line of idealists in a region that attracted visionaries,dreamers and prophets.
A closer reading of their book, however, reveals that the utopian dream is just a ploy to blame Israel for the failure to achieve the "condition." By focusing on Israeli shortcomings, real and imagined, Ophir and Azoulay give a pass to the serious problems with Arab and Muslim true "condition."
As the current round of struggle between Israel and Hamas- controlled Gaza plays out, there are plenty of reminders of the Arab "condition". Incessant rocket attacks on Israeli civilians, using residential areas in Gaza to hide terrorist infrastructure, rejoicing at a bomb attack on a bus in Tel Aviv and vigilante killings of people suspected of collaborating with Israel (and dragging their bodies through the streets) are just some of the manifestations of the "conditions". In the wider Middle East, wholesale persecution and killing of Christians - that decimated some of the oldest Christian communities in the world - alongside killing of homosexuals and harassment and intimidation of seculars is rampant.
No one would expect Ophir and Azoulay to direct the "guided imagining" to such reality. Quite clearly, it would damage their life work to carefully construct the image of Israel as the villain in the utopian pageant.

Israel's current efforts to stop the rocket attacks from Gaza has attracted the attention of the radical academic community- among themIdan Landau (BGU, Linguistics), Julia Chaitin (Sapir & BGU, Conflict Resolution) and Shlomo Sand (TAU, History).
Predictably, they all blame Israel, exculpate the Palestinian side and call for talks with Hamas. Shlomo Sand's question "Why are they shooting missiles at us?" is characteristic of this attitude. He is backed up by Landau, a pacifist and draft resister. Chaitin, a leader in a group Other Voice, faults Israel for "not talking".
In the parallel universe created by the radical fraternity, neither facts nor basic rules of power politics matter. Unfortunately, Israel lives in the real universe and had to contend with its realities. Here are some of the facts that Landau, Chaitin and Sand ignore.
Iran, which started its unrelenting campaign to undermine the Oslo Accord by ordering Jihadist suicide bombings in Israel in 1994, is still pulling the strings. Iran has supplied Gaza with much of its new hardware, including Fajr-5 rockets capable of hitting Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
Hamas is in the middle of a power struggle between its Gaza -based leadership and Khaleed Mashal, who is required to step down as the head the political bureau. Mashaal, who resided in Damascus, is known to represent Iran and its biddings. As widely assumed, the regime in Tehran pushed for the confrontation as a way of deflecting from its nuclear program and involvement in the Syrian civil war.
Following the Arab Spring, Hamas has contended with a challenge from ultra-radical Jihadists such as Islamic Jihad, Salafi cells with possible links to Al Qaeda in the Maghreb and Popular Resistance Committee that oppose any negotiations with Israel. These assorted factions have their own rocket launching capabilities. Intelligence sources in Israel and the United States are not sure whether Hamas lost control over these groups or was forced to give in to the rocket attacks to avoid being seen as "soft on Israel."
In either case, negotiations with Hamas are difficult and an agreement would probably be only temporary. It is telling that the New York Times, not known as a friend of Israel, is accusing Hamas of a failure of legitimacy in an editorial. NYT fingered Mashaal for ignoring the suffering of his own people to make political gains.
Finally, in spite of the tactical fragmentation in Gaza, Hamas and other factions share the belief that Israel is an illegitimate entity in the Middle East and needs to be uprooted. It is more than a passing irony that Sand's book The Invention of the Jewish People has been prominently embraced by Hamas, Iran and all those who deny Israel's legitimacy in the region. His new book The Invention of the Land of Israel will undoubtedly cement his position as a hero in these circles. Next time when Sand asks the question "Why are they shooting missiles at us?" he can find an answer in his own books which provide an academic veneer to the Hamas thesis.

Anat Matar (Tel Aviv University) spoke at the London Conference in Critical Thought, an annual event of critical international scholars, critical human rights advocates and other radical post-modernists.
Critical ethics is a variation of the theme that there no objective, empirical standards in societal discourse. Critical ethics is a another way of saying that those who engage in political debate should follow subjective ethics, a notion elaborated upon by the British philosopher Simon Critchley. Critchley states that to tackle injustice scholars need to adopt "ethically committed political anarchism."
For Matar, even this radical take on ethics of discourse is too much. She asserts that such ethics are a residue of liberal-democratic thought. She "proves" that in the Israeli-Palestinian case, such ethics are instruments of "conservative power" that are at best "hypocrite" and at worse "oppressive." Though her English is convoluted, the message is clear; any claim by Israel is "hypocrite" and "oppressive."
As IAM reported in the past, Matar made good use of radical ethics by urging to grant Palestinian terrorists the status of political prisoners. Those who may question her rationale need to seek the answer in the parallel universe that critical ethics has created- a universe where Palestinian terrorists are the victims and the Israelis who die at their hands are the perpetrators.

Gadi Algazi, a professor at TAU and a radical activist, is currently in Germany to deliver two talks, today and tomorrow, on the Negev Bedouins and Israel's "colonial project" in the territories.
Algazi misrepresents the complex situation of the Bedouins- a topic that IAM has covered in great detail in the past. Alagazi chose to forgo objective discussion, writing: "Everywhere in the Negev desert houses and improvised huts are demolished. With bulldozers and massive police deployment want to bring "the desert bloom"".
Algazi's second presentation is entitled "Israel's Occupation is a Colonial project: the Settlements are a business." Based on a 2006 essay, it combines two of Algazi's passions - anti-colonialism and anti-capitalism. Full of misleading, exaggerated or false assertions, the essay has become part of the "Who Profits from the Occupation" theBDS campaign. To hear Algazi tell it, Israel occupied the territories to give more scope to venture capitalists.
Of course, Algazi, like any other private citizen, has a right to political views, however outlandish. But his host in Germany - Salam, Shalom, an extremist group based in Munich - has listed him as professor from Tel Aviv University. Salam, Shalom collaborates with the German branch of the Campaign Against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran (CASMII), a front of the Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. IAM found that some lectures by Israeli academics hosted by Salam,Shalom have been posted on the CASMII website.
Algazi the Tel Aviv professor - not Algazi the Israeli citizen- is a gift to the Iranian propaganda machine. The German- educated Algazi should be reminded that Wilhelm von Humboldt, the architect of the modern, secular higher education system, warned faculty against abusing their academic credentials lest they embarrass their university.

Moshe Zuckermann (Tel Aviv University) has produced yet another dramatic rendition of the Israeli -Palestinian conflict. The following is a summary of his article that appeared in the Communist publication Junge Welt on October 10, 2012. A German press is planning to publish a collection of Zuckermann's essays.
The article starts with a dramatic headline: Israel does not exist, is has been already eliminated . As for substance, the books deals with German-Jewish relation, with anti- Semitism, anti Zionism and the Middle East conflict.
As befitting his sweeping "revisionist" view, Zuckermann's approach is a-historical; he writes about a non-Jewish collective of Arabs throughout the article. He fails to mention the Ottoman Empire and the international upheavals that had shaken the region to the core.
Zuckermann's treatment of the process that had led to the creation of the State of Israel is equally telling. To him the Arabs and Palestinians are passive victims of colonial machinations who bear no responsibility for their actions and thus, need to be sheltered from the consequences of these deeds.
If Zuckermann's treatment of the Arab/Palestinian as victims before 1948 is puzzling, his take on the 1948-9, 1967 and 1973 wars is downright outlandish. In these cases sovereign Arab states decided to attack Israel, but this fact is nowhere to be found. Ironically, Zuckermann's who rails against Western and Israeli colonialism, perpetuates some of its worst stereotypes - Arabs/Palestinians are "native innocents."
Zuckermann's discussion of the Israeli-German Treaty of Redress of 1952 (German reparation) shows his bias and, some would add, malice. He does not analyze the Treaty or provides a background, just an opinion. He claims that after 1945 the German payments to Israeli citizens who were at large no direct victims of the German crimes, neither physically nor mentally. The money, in his view, was needed to absorb Jewish immigration after the founding of the State. Even if the reparation was used to resettle refugees, there is a callousness in Zuckermann's contention that those who survived the Holocaust were not touched physically and mentally by it.
In discussing the Nakba, which he describes as the national catastrophe of the Palestinians, Zuckermann has pursued his well- known comparison between Jewish victims of the Holocaust and Arab victims of the Israeli Jews.
Zuckermann's treatment of German domestic policies and its relations with Israel is another exercise in either ignorance or bias. As for the former, he misrepresents the 1968 riots in Germany as a movement of "critical consciousness" headed by Daniel Cohn -Bendit. In reality, many of the radicals were right-wingers masquerading as progressive socialists. With regard to the latter, Zuckermann feeds into a popular right-wing theme in Germany that sees the relations between the two countries as a burden imposed by the guilt over the Holocaust . He does not bother to explain that this is minority view to which most Germans do not subscribe.
He is apparently blind or misleading when it comes to Islamism and Islamists, a small but violent subset of Islam. Had Zuckermann be more forthcoming, he would have had to acknowledge that many, if not a majority of Palestinians, subscribe to the Hamas Covenant that calls for the elimination of the State of Israel. Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad that rules the Gaza Strip has certainly not changed their vision and Fatah, the secular movement in the West Bank, has little popular power there, as the recent municipal elections had demonstrate.
There is a good reason to ignore the Palestinian Islamists. Zuckermann and many of his radical academic colleagues, have never abandoned the dream of creating a bi-national state in Palestine. To admit the widespread popularity of Islamism emboldened by the victory of Muslim Brothers in Egypt and beyond, would beg the question how can the entity be created and sustained.
But fealty to facts and reality never bothered Zuckermann. The German expert Dr. Gudrun Eussner, who researched the subject of "Socialist Journalism and Journalists in the GDR," commented that Zuckermann's writing fits the propagandist style of journalists in the former East Germany. She noted that instead of analyzing history and politics, he is using a vocabulary of indoctrination, of contempt, ridiculing those who do not agree with him. Instead of being precise, he uses broad generalization and above all, he selects what suits his thesis. His aim is not to explain but to indoctrinate.
Of course, Zuckermann lives in a democracy which allows its citizens to express their views, no matter how twisted and abhorrent they may be. But as a professor it behooves him to do better. He should be reminded that William W. Van Alysten, a distinguished legal scholar, counsel and former head of the American Association of University Professors, urged his colleagues to protect the legitimacy of the academy even when acting extramurally. It is clear that Zuckermann who uses his affiliation with Tel Aviv University when producing screeds that play into the hands of both the right and left wing in Germany, does not honor Van Alysten's plea.

Israel’s abnormal political status – a liberal democracy engaging in an ongoing occupation – should in my view be seen more generally, as a symptom of the practical bankruptcy of the liberal democratic viewpoint nowadays. The occupation is in many ways – legally, officially, and even, in a way, morally – an exception in the Israeli social and political landscape. Israeli democracy has allowed this exception to take place for more than four decades, through a series of double-standard policies that maintain democracy, freedom and human rights within Israeli society, while denying these same rights, suspending the implementation of the same values, in the occupied territories. Such a double-standard morality is typical, in my view, of contemporary liberal democracies in the West. The case of Israel is no doubt an extreme one. Two major examples – less strikingly acknowledged – of the same fallacy are the United States’ war politics of the last decades, and the European Union’s profit-oriented policy underlying the inclusion of new member states and its policy vis-à-vis the financial crisis of recent years.

Yehuda Shenhav (TAU) was hired to teach and research sociology of organizations. Instead, he has spent virtually all his time publishing polemical work on the Arab-Israeli conflict. As IAM reported, in his previous book, Shenhav concluded that the Mizrahim are Arab Jews victimized by Zionism. He is violently opposed to the decision of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to include the issue of Jewish refugees in the final negations with the Palestinians. In his new book, Trapped by the Green Line, Shenhav advocates a bi-national state and the right of return of Palestinian refugees.
As any citizen of Israel Shenhav has the right to his political views. But he has no right to expect the Israeli taxpayer to support his political ventures.
IAM has repeated pointed out that, once tenured, some radical faculty switch to writing about the Arab-Israeli conflict. The case of Shenhav is especially egregious as his new "field" earned him a subsequent promotion to full professor. Such questionable standards would not be tolerated in science and engineering and should not be tolerated in social sciences as well.

Anat Matar (TAU) seems undeterred by the Knesset legislation making support for BDS illegal.
Peter Brook, the famous British director, backed out from a previous engagement with the HaCameri Theater as a result of pressure applied by pro-Palestinian activists. Matar was among the Israeli activists invested in the campaign to dissuade Brook. In her letter to the director, Matar noted that the Cameri played in Ariel, a town that "was built beyond the Green Line for the purpose of making a peace with the Palestinians impossible." She likewise asserted that, as a result, the HaCameri Theater supported the "oppression of the Palestinians by performing in occupied land."

Screening and discussion of the film "Whither Israel?"
A screening-debate organized by the CJPP5
The debate will be attended by Dominique Vidal and Shlomo Sand and director of the film, Camille Clavel .
Forty years after "Why Israel" Claude Lanzmann (1972), "Whither Israel? "Is a new journey across the country and around the roots of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The filmmaker accomplished by a process that is both personal and universal: it is for him to go up the name of her great-grandmother, who died in Treblinka at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem.
But also to question the memory of those who live in the disputed land, and their ability to live together in one or two states.
The filmmaker interviewed a large number of observers - especially the historian Shlomo Sand, author of "How the Jewish people was invented" (Fayard, 2008), Gadi Algazi historian, writer Aharon Appelfeld, and a range of Israelis, Jews and Arabs, who explain their vision of the state and its future.

In recent years Israel's control over the Palestinian people in the occupied territories has changed. While the presence of the Israeli army has been greatly reduced, the occupation has taken a more invisible form. In her new book The Bureaucracy of Occupation, attorney Yael Berda sheds light on how the Israeli secret service (the Shabak) exploits every point of contact with Palestinians, especially the imposed permit system, to recruit informants to further its control over the population. Activist Anan Quzmar of Birzeit University's Rights to Education campaign tells The Real News' Lia Tarachansky how this form of "phantom control" makes political involvement and activism nearly impossible.

Adi Ophir (TAU), the subject of a large number of IAM posting has done it again. Ophir, one of the most radical activists, has been working with Zochrot, an organization dedicated to creating a bi-national state in Israel-Palestine. To Ophir and many of the bi-nationalists among the radical faculty, this is a noble goal, something that would undo what they consider the immoral and illegitimate creation of the State of Israel. There is nothing new in this vision, a vision that Ophir has shared with Matzpen and Brit Shalom.
What is new is Ophir’s total disconnect from reality accompanied by an oddly self-congratulatory tone. He takes great pride in his role in changing the “consciousness” of the Nakba by “problematizing” it. To the extent that one can decipher his rather convoluted prose, raising awareness of the Palestinian Catastrophe can serve a number of contemporary goals, including a bi-national state. At the minimum, it can “pick the wound of the regime” by pointing to the moral stain on its legitimacy.
If Ophir paid more attention to reality, especially international reality, he would have had to admit that the Palestinians and their Arab supporters rejected the 1947 UN Partition Proposal. Worse, they started a war and lost it and, as a result, suffered the fate of other losing belligerents, including the Germans after WWII. No doubt, for the Palestinians this was a human and political catastrophe, but one that is dictated by rules of international relations, where losing is never a good thing. Had Jews lost the war, they would probably fared much worse that the Palestinians. If Ophir paid more attention to reality, he would have realized that the Palestinians had lost an opportunity to achieve sovereignty in Camp David II because of a failure of leadership and the demand for return of the refugees. If Ophir paid attention to reality, he would have realized that the Middle East is undergoing a seismic change, making the chances of settling the conflict any time soon very slim. The dream of creating a bi-national state is what it always was, a dream.
But Ophir is not likely to pay attention to reality as he is a devotee of Michel Foucault, the “founding father” of critical, post-modern linguistic philosophy. In his world, reality does not exist, truth is not attainable and scholars are called to challenge “hegemonic narratives” of the elites in order to uncover the “narratives” of the victims. The post-modern discourse is all about language, consciousness, manipulation of guilt and shame. Critical scholars quote Foucault and each other but have little use for empirical facts. When reality intrudes, it is brushed away, a practice they have learned from the master himself. Foucault created a narrative of Ayatollah Khomeini as a progressive, enlightened and humane leader. His fascination with and celebration of the Iranian revolution was so extreme that, though a homosexual himself, he denied that the regime hanged men as a punishment for homosexuality.
Ophir displays the same type of obtuseness when it comes to reality. Writing about the commemorating of Nakba, he describes the “pathetical denial and “hysterical reaction” of critics. Ophir would not admit to the possibility that even those on the left got discouraged after the rejection of Oslo, years of Intifada, shelling from the Gaza Strip, not to mention the new worries about an emerging alliance among the Muslim Brotherhood controlled Egypt, Iran and Hamas. At the end of the article, he states with pride that the “dogs who barked on the [Nakba commemoration] caravan belong to the right” but “our caravan went on.” While it is not obvious that all the dogs belonged to the right, but is quite clear that the caravan went on to utopia.

Professor Daniel Bar-Tal (TAU) made a career of finding faults with the Israelis. First, he concluded that the Israelis are so traumatized by the Holocaust experience (or alternatively the Massada syndrome), that they cannot commit themselves to peace. This so-called "it is all in their head" theory became a huge hit in the peace research and conflict resolution circles, where anti-Israel venom was carefully cultivated by Johan Galutng who pioneered the field.
Lately, things became difficult for Bar-Tal; his theory that the Israeli psyche was to blame for failure to achieve peace became discredited by reality. Worse, Galtung, whom Bar-Tal called his mentor, was revealed as a garden- variety anti-Semite fond of quoting the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
Bar-Tal's newest venture should be seen in this context. With the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at least temporary beyond control of self-serving peace researchers, he has moved on to the domestic science. In his newest project, Bar-Tal found that Israeli youth in general and religious youth in particular, harbor non-democratic attitudes. He warned that Israel will abandon democracy once this new cohort enters the political cycle. Undoubtedly, this finding will make the European foundations that fund this type of research happy.
Unlike the self-avowed neo-Marxist critical scholars, Bar-Tal has tried to preserve the image of an objective scholar. However, IAM revealed his long career as political activist and a former co-editor of the radical Palestine-Israel Journal that specialized in blaming Israel for all the problems in the peace process.
There are a couple suggestions for Bar-Tal if he wants to restore his academic credibility . First, as IAM demanded, he should denounce Galtung. Second, he should look back at his previous studies and predictions and explain why his forecasts did not materialize.

Some months ago, IAM reported on anti-Semitic expressions of Professor Johan Galtung, a leading scholar in peace research. At the time, IAM called on TAU Professor Daniel Bar-Tal, a disciple of Galtung to denounce him. Among others, Bar-Tal asked Galtung to keynote a conference in Tel Aviv; where the latter made invidious comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany. While at least one radical Israeli scholar expressed dismay at Galtung's anti-Semitism, Bar-Tal kept silent, perhaps because he did not want to upset the "international peace community," a source of many of his accolades.
It is noted that Bar-Tal often cited Galtung and declared him to be THE greatest peace researcher.
Now, after the Swiss-based World Peace Academy suspended Galtung, Bar-Tal should find enough moral courage to speak up.

Gadi Algazi of Tel Aviv University presents a distorted reality in two separate events, one in France where he told the audience that "Bedouins in Israel are the most marginalized...They are citizens in Israel, but as enemies". Although Algazi is a founding member of Ta'ayush (living together, in Arabic) his aim is to drive a wedge between Israel and the Bedouins.
In Germany, Algazi seems to incite against Israel, he said "I would call for economic & political pressure on Israel until it agrees to completely stop its colonization".

Ariella Azoulay, a lexicographer (photographer) at the radical Minerva Humanities Center at TAU, has made a career out of a visual comparison of the alleged atrocities of Nakba to the Holocaust. The Nabka-as-Holocaust is a collective project of radical Israeli scholars led by Adi Ophir, Azoulay's life partner and the director of the Minerva Humanities Center, (who recruited her regardless of the TAU rule that spouses can not be hired), Hanan Hever (HUJ), Yehouda Shenhav (TAU), among others. She also used the power of images to “imagine” hidden reality. To her, a group of Palestinians who stand outside a building guarded by IDF soldiers represents the “real reality” of torture.
In her latest venture, Azoulay offers a class on pictorial representations of revolutions, starting with the French Revolution. In a rambling introduction to her class, Azoulay's talent for falsifying reality with images is on full display.
She screens a picture of a mob trying to cross the border from Syria into Israel; on the other side they are confronted by Israeli soldiers. According to reports, this was a publicity stunt engineered by Bashar Assad, who tried to distract from the bloody revolution in his country. Participants were paid by the regime and bussed to the border area on the eve of the Nakba anniversary in 2011, to make the point that Palestinians are trying to return to their lost homeland. Azoulay’s narrative is very different; she tells the audience that these are simple people threatened by the military power of Israel, in other words, “people power vs. a brutal military regime. “
Ironically but not unexpectedly, Azoulay has no images to convey the depth of the revolutionary upheaval in Syria. For her, unpleasant realities that threaten to upset the radical narrative can be rubbed out of existence by simply failing to click the camera.

Yehouda Shenhav (TAU), was hired by the Sociology Department to teach and research sociology of organizations but moved on to the more "glamorous" field of Israeli-Palestinian conflict and ethnic relations. Along the way, Shenhav, who once worked for the Israeli Military Industry (Rafael), had reinvented himself as a neo-Marxist, critical scholar. As a consummate practitioner of the new paradigm, Shenhav has devoted most of his academic career to attacking the "Zionist narratives."
According to Shenhav, Mizrahim a.k.a, Arab Jews are victims of Zionism that alienated them from their cultural kin, the Arabs. He asserted that once these Arab Jews realize that they were mislead by the Zionists, they would join his proposed Palestinian- Mizrahi coalition to undermine the "Zionist project." Shenhav's name change, did not impress the Mizrahim; instead of forging a "post-Zionist" alliance with the Palestinians, many of them joined the Shas Party that has sustained the success of right-wing Likud governments.
But Shenhav does not seem to be daunted by such discrepancies between reality and his writings. In his new book Shenhav promotes his political agenda, the one-state solution, and wastes more TAU's money in the process.

Dr. Alon Liel is a former director-general of Israel’s foreign ministry and was the Israeli ambassador to SA from 1992 to 1994.
He says: The simple act of marking settlement products differently to Israeli products pulls the rug from under the refusal to declare a border. It has provoked Zionist outrage because it says: to here and no further. It causes embarrassment because those who claim to want two states cannot morally justify why products from the future Palestine should be marked as "made in Israel".
I buy Israeli products every day and do my best not to buy Israeli products from the occupied territories. I don’t see why you, living outside Israel, shouldn’t have the same choice.

Dear Professor Moshe Zuckermann,
We are sorry that you chose to respond to our post in a sarcastic manner.
We never "condemned" you for giving a lecture on Beethoven. We simply raised the question whether under the guise of academic freedom, you and other faculty members have the right to switch the research topics to bolster political activism. Such a change would not be tolerated in science and engineering and should not be tolerated in liberal arts. As we noted, it reflects a lack of professional standards and shows contempt for students in the humanities and social sciences, not to mention the the tax payer.

We clearly pointed out that the mentioned faculty do more than express their opinion in their free time. They were appointed to teach and research in particular fields but, upon receiving tenure, moved on to researching aspects of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict because it fits their political agenda.
Surely, you would agree that a university cannot allow their faculty to research whatever they want to, especially when the subject is not even remotely related to the specialization for which they were hired. We want to remind you that the report of the Council of Higher Education (CHE) regarding the Department of Politics and Government at Ben Gurion University, considered it problematic that many on the staff did not research on topics that they taught. In other words, the CHE concluded that academic freedoms have to be limited to the domain of specialization, even if broadly defined.
There is a reason for requiring faculty to research within the broad confines of their field of expertise. First, it has been determined that classroom instruction is greatly enhanced by relevant research experience of the teaching staff. Only non-research colleges do not require their lecturers to research and publish, effectively severing the link between teaching and research. Second, by allowing faculty freedom of research well outside their discipline, the university (and society) is robbed of research on topics that are deemed important and for which positions were created in the first place. Third, permissive practices deprive students of a meaningful educational experience that they have the right to expect in a research university as opposed to a non-research college.

Professor Moshe Zuckermann, one of the most radical academics at Tel Aviv University, has been profiled by IAM before. He is a self-proclaimed anti-Zionist who accused Israel of creating a "Holocaust industry" to further its political goals. Employed as a professor of German history, Zuckermann, has turned his knowledge of German into a virulent anti-Israel campaign in Germany. In his 2010 book Antisemit! Zuckermann, a son of Holocaust survivors from Poland, repeats the charge that Israel has used anti-Semitism and the Holocaust as an instrument of dispossessing and oppressing the Palestinian people.
As expected, Zuckermann has jumped into the controversy generated by Gunter Grass's anti-Israeli poem. In line with his previous writings, Zuckermann defends Grass from charges of anti-Semitism, in spite of his "youthful SS past" and blames a "a well -orchestrated hysteria" attack against the writer. Zuckermann, sees evidence of the "Holocaust industry" in service of Israel around every corner; he claims that the Israeli embassy in Berlin manipulated the Holocaust, to turn cases of legitimate criticism of Israel into expressions of anti-Semitism.
Zuckermann stretches his "academic expertise" even further when declaring that the Iranian regime would never engage in a nuclear attack against Israel. He blames Prime Minster Netanyahu for evoking the memory of the Holocaust to rally the country behind an attack against Tehran. As for Ahmadinejad and his threats to destroy Israel, Zuckermann writes off as "rhetoric" not different from Netanyahu's rhetoric on Iran.
As a private citizen, Zuckermann is entitled to hold anti-Israeli opinions, no matter how virulent. However, as a professor in a reputable university, he should be expected to produce less biased writings. Had he taught in Germany, he would be probably subject to the German Constitution Article 5 (3) that grants academic freedoms to scholars under condition that they employ sound scientific principles in their research and writings. The Federal Constitutional Court has utilized this article to outlaw Holocaust denial and other cases of historical falsification and anti-Semitic writings. Ironically, Israel has an expansive view of academic freedoms, making it safe for Zuckermann to use the gamut of demagogy, misrepresentation of historical facts and contemporary realities.

Dear Governor,
As you well know, Israel has been the subject to a delegimization campaign led by academics, some employed by Tel Aviv University. Under the guise of academic freedom they turned their positions into a platform for relentless attacks on Israel.
While academic staff in a western society enjoys freedom of expression, this freedom is not intended for propagation of political agenda on either the right or left. We urge the Board to ensure that activist faculty should not engage in such egregious violations of these basic freedoms.

In 2008 Prof. Shlomo Sand published a book in Hebrew entitled “The Invention of the Jewish People”. The following year, it was translated into English by Yael Lotan and became an international bestseller. In the book, Sand argues that the Jews are not a “pure” race. The Ashkenazi (Western) Jews, according to Sand, are in fact descendants of the Khazars, a semi-nomadic Turkic people who ruled in the north Caucuses and who were forcibly converted en masse to Judaism in the eighth and ninth centuries. He thus portrays Judaism as a militant religion, which expanded through proselytisation and conquest, although traditionally Judaism is opposed to missionizing. By this account, North African and other Sefardic Jewish communities (originating in Spain) were also conquered and converted to Judaism as the religion spread along the Mediterranean coast of North Africa. Of course, some of the converts to Judaism later converted forcibly to Christianity or even Islam. By debunking the “myth of the exile” Sand claims that today’s Jews were not in fact expelled from ancient Palestine and therefore they have no historical claim over Palestine. Those who do possess historical rights are the Palestinians, who, according to Sand, lived in Palestine continuously. The implication of Sand’s propositions is that today the Jews have no claim to live in the Jewish state of Israel.

This line of thinking raises many questions about the homeland of the Jewish people. Did the Bible or the Talmud prescribe a concept of homeland that was consistent with the modern day usage of the term? What is the essence of the Promised Land? Is it a land that is sacred to the three Western monotheistic religions, or is it the land of origin of world Jewry? Did devout Jewish followers of the Talmud truly aspire to emigrate there over a period of 2,000 years, and, if so, why do they not wish to live there today? And what about the country’s indigenous population, whom the concept of the Jewish homeland has transformed into civic sub-tenants in their own country? Do they have a right to continue living there, or is their stay only temporary? What are their chances of achieving self-sovereignty in their own homeland?
After critically examining the myth of the eternal existence of the Jewish people, Shlomo Sand turns his attention to the mysterious sacred land that has emerged as the territorial bone of contention in the longest running national struggle of the twentieth century. His new book, The Invention of the Land of Israel, deconstructs the age-old legends surrounding the Holy Land and the prejudices that continue to suffocate it. Sand’s account examines the fundamental meaning of the concept of ‘historical right’ and traces the ‘invention’ of the modern geopolitical concept of the ‘Land of Israel’ by nineteenth century Evangelical Protestants and Jewish Zionists. This national invention is not only what facilitated the colonization of the Middle East and the establishment of the State of Israel; it is also what is threatening the existence of the Jewish state today.

[TAU, History] Prof. Shlomo Sand is an expert in the fields of Cinema and History, French Intellectual History, Nation and Nationalism. His book, The Invention of the Jewish People has turned this once obscure academic with a decidedly modest scholarly record into an international superstar, especially among those who seek to delegitimize the state of Israel. Among others, he was interviewed by the Iranian English language television station, Press TV.
However, a symposium dedicated to his book in the Assad National Library in Damascus should be definitely considered his "crowing achievement." As well known, the Assad regime is waging a bloody war on his own civilians in which thousands have been killed, but the National Library, in a typical diversion maneuver, is using Sand's book to vilify Israel.
Sand, a former member of Matzpen, is typical of the philosophy of the radical left that "Jews can do no right and Arabs can do no wrong." He and his academic peers who make Israel the target of their moral outrage, have yet to condemn Syria.

Yael Berda, a former human rights lawyer currently at Princeton University, has been invited to speak at a conference at Tel Aviv University Law School. Berda is a self-proclaimed neo-Marxist, critical scholar who views Israel as a post-colonial state, a category popularized by Edward Said and adopted by Israeli critical scholars including Oren Yiftachel, Neve Gordon and Yehouda Shenhav with whom she collaborated in the past.
To bolster her thesis that Israel is a post-colonial state, a notion that mainstream political science and international relations do not accept, Berda works hard to compare Israeli practices with regard to permits for the Palestinians, to that of Great Britain, the quintessential colonial empire. She conveniently ignores the fact that the permit regime stems from the need to protect the Israeli population from terrorist attacks. No one who reads Berda's writing would ever know that terrorism has been a weapon of choice of Islamist and their masters in Tehran, as well as secular elements in the Palestinian Authority that rejected the Oslo agreement.
It would be equally hard to learn from Berda that Israel has given up control of the Gaza Strip and large part of the West Bank, in spite of lack of a formal agreement. In fact, the unilateral IDF withdrawal from the Gaza Strip has put about a million inhabitants within the range of missiles and rocket attacks from the Hamas- controlled territory.
No fair observer can deny the inconvenience that the permit regime has caused the Palestinians as they conduct their daily lives. At the same time, by trying to force the complex reality of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict into the Procrustean bed of the post-colonial paradigm, Berda and her hosts at the Law School at Tel Aviv University have lost all academic credibility.
Unlike other public venues, academia is expected to serve as a "market-place of ideas," a mission that was famously formulated by Wilhelm von Humboldt and implemented throughout the Western world. Manipulating reality and misrepresenting information most definitely do not serve that goal.

Here are a few thoughts for Ariella Azoulay (TAU, Minerva Humanities) who laments the fact that Nakba is not recognized enough.
First, no one would deny that the Nakba was a personal tragedy for the Palestinians. However, the Palestinians rejected the 1947 U.N. Partition Proposal and, with the help of five Arab countries, started a war against the Jews and lost. Like other losing belligerents in international relations they paid the price for initiating a conflict.
Second, the 1948 war is one of the most researched topics in contemporary history. A Google search of Katyn Forest Massacre and Dir Yasin illustrates the point. The former, a notorious massacre of more than twenty thousand Polish army officers and officials at the hands of the KGB during WWII has 235,000 entries. The latter, referring to the killing of some 200 Arab villagers by the right-wing Irgun that was roundly condemned by the leadership of the Yishuv, has 350,000 entries.
Third, Israeli universities face financial problems and need to prioritize the allocation of public funds and private donations. IAM has repeatedly reported that at Tel Aviv and Ben Gurion universities, a disproportionately high number of faculty engage in the study of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, even when they were hired to teach and research in unrelated fields. At the same time, entire segments in sociology, political science and psychology go unattended. Other tenured academics stop researching in order to devote their time to political activism.
The real question is whether students and tax payers are getting a good deal for their money.

Professor Hanna Herzog (TAU, Sociology) is chair of a conference "Other Sex" on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) Studies, sponsored by Tel Aviv and Ben Gurion universities, held on May 20-22, 2012.
As IAM reported in the past, the Israeli LGBT movement has a number of academic activists who are bitter critics of Israel. It is no coincidence that some of them appear on the panels. Particularly troubling is the case of Dalit Baum, formerly from Haifa University, an activist at the global BDS movement against Israel (Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions) who now heads the West Coast initiative of the American Friends Service Committee (Quakers) against Israel and is a leader in the Who Profits from Occupation. Another panelist involved with Who Profits from the Occupation is Merav Amir, a new recruit at BGU, Politics and Government Department. Leehee Rothschild, another anti-Israel activist is involved with Boycott From Within, an Israeli group that promotes BDS. Both Baum, Amir and Rothschild have appeared in numerous Western universities where they compare Israel to the apartheid state of South Africa.
Herzog's decision to invite the BDS campaigners is questionable, especially when university funding is involved.

Yoav Peled (TAU) is a self-acknowledged Marxist and one of the pioneers of the neo-Marxist, critical scholarship paradigm. As reported by IAM, the paradigm, which Edward Said had introduced to Middle East studies, has come to dominate much of the academic discourse. Accordingly, Zionism was a Jewish colonial movement sponsored by European colonial powers; it disposed poor Palestinians and subsequently ethnically cleansed them.
Peled devoted his entire academic career to "proving" this case, manipulating both scientific conventions and reality. With regard to the former, Peled goes against positivist (traditional) understanding of the colonial phenomenon which, as well known, features a "mother country" supporting its colonial settlers. Peled understands that in spite of the Balfour Declaration, Britain turned hostile to the Jews, negating his own argument. Peled's solution to this methodological "inconvenience" is to claim that Zionism was an "atypical case."
Peled's assertion that the Six Day War was a "colonial war" is even more egregious. In his zeal to prove the alleged Israel's predilection to "colonial expansion," Peled ignores the fact that it was Egypt and other Arab states that provoked the war. Indeed, international relations literature has provided a compelling picture of Egypt's miscalculations, abetted by Moscow, that led to the outbreak of hostilities.
Peled's arguments do not hold up well in exchange with positivist scholars, as the following article shows. But they are very popular with the disciples of the Saidian paradigm that mixes traditional anti-Semitic themes with the newer anti-Zionist ones.

Ishay Fridman, a journalist for Makor Rishon told IAM he interviewed a student by the name of Anat Levy, one of the organizers of the Nakba Memorial Day at Tel Aviv University. Levy disclosed that Professor Aeyal Gross, Dr. Anat Matar and Dr. Anat Bilezki have sponsored the Nakba event at TAU and that they gave her permission to have their names mentioned.

I began to understand what is really happening in our universities – by way of an in-depth, well supported, 10-page article written by Prof. Ziva Shamir. Shamir is known as one of the country's foremost experts on our national poet - Hayim Nahman Bialik.
In this article, printed in the journal "New Directions" (Volume 26, June 2012, Zionist Federation Publishing, Hebrew), Shamir explains to readers what is happening in higher education. Upon reading her article, one can understand why Israeli students are now commemorating Nakba Day. After all, Israel's rich culture is being wiped from memory at Tel Aviv University and other universities.
In the literature department, for example, according to the most up-to-date student course catalog, there is not a single class dedicated to the works of Bialik, or other celebrated Israeli writers like Natan Alterman or Shmuel Yosef Agnon (Shai Agnon). On the other hand, Shamir writes, "there are courses dedicated to literature on the occupation, to refusing [military orders], gender and other topics in which the lecturers first insert the arrow, and only then, with a steady hand, draw bulls-eye around it."
Prof. Shamir is not a political activist, and her name has never appeared, as far as I can recall, among the signatures on various petitions – be it from the Left or the Right. But she sees the politicization happening within the universities, especially at Tel Aviv University where she taught for 40 years. She laments the fact that instead of teaching Bialik, a course called "the female author as a high-class prostitute, literature as a pimp" is offered. And this course has become a highly respected academic subject (!) Shamir notes. Fashion and politics have taken hold of the curriculum.
She warns against politicization becoming the dominant power: expressions of politicization, she stresses, turn academic instruction into nothing less than uncontrollable and unrestrained brainwashing and indoctrination.

Yehouda Shenhav (TAU), who was hired by the Sociology Department to teach and research sociology of organizations, has moved on to the more "glamorous" field of Israeli-Palestinian conflict and ethnic relations. Along the way, Shenhav, who once worked for the Israeli Military Industry (Rafael), had reinvented himself as a neo-Marxist, critical scholar. As a consummate practitioner of the new paradigm, Shenhav attacked "Zionist narratives" and constructs, including the "construct of the Israeli society."
Naturally, he applies his new insight to his class "Israeli Society; "the introduction promises to undermine the fact that there is an a priori concept called "Israeli society" or that there is a "canonic narrative" that is acceptable to all segments of Israeli society. Students are asked to read different texts in support of this contention.
Quite possibly, Shenhav could assign his own research: one choice would be his work on Jews from Arab speaking countries, known as Mizrahim, whom he renamed Arab Jews. According to Shenhav, Mizrahim a.k.a, Arab Jews are victims of Zionism that alienated them from their cultural kin, the Arabs. He asserted that once these Arab Jews realize that they were mislead by the Zionists, they would join his proposed Palestinian- Mizrahi coalition to undermine the "Zionist project."
The problem with Shenhav's "counter Zionist narrative" is that it exists only in the author's imagination. In spite of the fact he renamed them Arab Jews in hope of forging a post-Zionist alliance with the Palestinians, many Mizrahim joined the Shas party that has sustained the success of right-wing Likud governments.
Shenhav does not seem to be daunted by such discrepancies between reality which he calls "the canonic narrative" and his writings. He also cultivates a new generation of scholars-activists such as his research assistant Eilat Maoz. This is standard practice among neo-Marxist, critical faculty. Even if their "narratives" do not work out in reality, there would always be a new cadre to spread the message.

Yehouda Shenhav (TAU), who was hired by the Sociology Department to teach and research sociology of organizations, has moved on to the more "glamorous" field of Israeli-Palestinian conflict and ethnic relations. Along the way, Shenhav, who once worked for the Israeli Military Industry (Rafael), had reinvented himself as a neo-Marxist, critical scholar. As a consummate practitioner of the new paradigm, Shenhav attacked "Zionist narratives" and constructs, including the "construct of the Israeli society."
Naturally, he applies his new insight to his class "Israeli Society; "the introduction promises to undermine the fact that there is an a priori concept called "Israeli society" or that there is a "canonic narrative" that is acceptable to all segments of Israeli society. Students are asked to read different texts in support of this contention.
Quite possibly, Shenhav could assign his own research: one choice would be his work on Jews from Arab speaking countries, known as Mizrahim, whom he renamed Arab Jews. According to Shenhav, Mizrahim a.k.a, Arab Jews are victims of Zionism that alienated them from their cultural kin, the Arabs. He asserted that once these Arab Jews realize that they were mislead by the Zionists, they would join his proposed Palestinian- Mizrahi coalition to undermine the "Zionist project."
The problem with Shenhav's "counter Zionist narrative" is that it exists only in the author's imagination. In spite of the fact he renamed them Arab Jews in hope of forging a post-Zionist alliance with the Palestinians, many Mizrahim joined the Shas party that has sustained the success of right-wing Likud governments.
Shenhav does not seem to be daunted by such discrepancies between reality which he calls "the canonic narrative" and his writings. He also cultivates a new generation of scholars-activists such as his research assistant Eilat Maoz. This is standard practice among neo-Marxist, critical faculty. Even if their "narratives" do not work out in reality, there would always be a new cadre to spread the message.

Born in 1962, Tel Aviv, Israel – Lives in Tel Aviv, Israel
Image theorist, curator, documentary filmmaker and author of numerous works on photography, Ariella Azoulay
presents a series of 24 collages for Intense Proximitycomposed of drawings and texts, tools for investigting the beginings of the Isreal-Palestinian conflict, between 1947 and 1950, spanning the four-year transformation of Palestine into Israel. Inspired by the photography archive of the International Committee of the Red Cross, the drawings are accompanied by their original legends in French. These drawings, based on the photographs, are for the creator a way of circumventing the ICRC’s ban on associating these comments with these images, in an attempt to control the use of this public archive—however historical it may be. The comments decode the intrinsic violence that inform relations between Israeli-Jews and Palestinians as well as tending to suspend the offical paradigm of “two camps”—Isreali and Palestine.The text is listed in two columns: on the left, a precise description of the image, its facts and circumstances; on the right, in italics, a succession of questions on the unresolved points of the emergency unfolding under the auspices of the ICRC. The title of the series, Unshowable Photographs/Different Ways Not To Say Deportation is evidence of Ariella Azoulay’s position on this complex history, prefering the term “deportation” or “expulsion” to that of “population transfers” or “repatriation” used in the offical legends of the ICRC—using the offical miltary and diplomatic jargon of the Israelis—that attempted to minimize the violence and tragic consequences of events. Supporting a detailed iconographic analysis, these images become a testimony—some indirectly and inadvertantly—as a kind of invisible resident to this history and the territories of which Ariella Azoulay renders this incomplete character.

Azoulay, a renowned photography historian, curator, writer, and filmmaker, will show an excerpt from her recently completed film Civil Alliance, Palestine, 1947–1948 (2012), which reconstructs what can be described as a civil race against the clock that took place in Palestine in the months leading up to the founding of the State of Israel, in May 1948.

Yehuda Shenhav: Wants to talk about three things. Why is it necessary to return to ’48, and why Zochrot’s work is important. Second, what conception of sovereignty makes return possible? Third, the space and time of return. I speak as an Israeli Jew, not as a Palestinian.
Return is not possible in two states for two peoples. The Israeli sovereign founded itself on preventing return. The Israeli sovereign speaks the language of legality and can’t admit to the ethnic cleansing of 1948. That’s why anyone who wants two states for two peoples requires we forget what happened in ’48 and is part of the most conservative Israeli approach. That’s why it’s important to hear what Eliaz Cohen has to say as a settler in the territories from 1967. Israel must remove the skeleton of 48 from the closet. The sovereign doesn’t tell us that because he rules by using the language of 48, the language of law. We saw in the recent social protest a demonstration of Israeli solidarity by those who lost power in 77. Sovereignty exists over matter, over territory, over life – the population – and over the spirit, identity. Lieberman is right, the subject is 48. The monopoly on identity and on territory results from the Peace of Westphalia in which the princes divided territories among themselves. The democratic Jewish state within the 67 borders will always be in a state of emergency but will make sure to conceal the fact. The Westphalian system is based on concealing the internal conflict; the only conflict is recognizes is external. Other, non-Westphalian, sovereignty must belong jointly to all subjects in the territory. Not a divided territory. It’s important that there not be a one-to-one correspondence between territory and population. How do we think about return? We must think differently about time and space. I think return is possible, not only one recognized symbolically. But return can’t reflect a narrative of “from destruction to redemption.” Return must exist constantly and as a myth. Settlements don’t have to be evacuated in the context of return. It’s immoral to expel a third generation that has been born there. The damage done to the Palestinians by the settlements is minor compared to what was done, for example, by Upper Nazareth. Why must one million residents of the Galilee to forced to accept a Jewish identity? Did the nakba occur only in ’48? Isn’t ‘Araqib also nakba? Isn’t the nakba is a continuing present? That’s why questions of time and space blend together. That’s why return must be thought of in political, not mythic, terms.

Professor Adi Ophir (Minerva Humanities -TAU), a frequent subject of IAM editorials, has done it again!!! With the help of his ideological mate, Ariella Azoulay, whom he employs at the Minerva Humanities Institute, Ophir decided to tackle the ambitious "Jewish Question." This weighty issue is the subject of an exhibition of "Where To?" in the Israeli Center for Digital Art in Holon.
In his introduction to the art project "From Here to There!" Ophir performs his ritualistic bashing of Israel; he describes Zionism as the doctrine of the "impossible," his animus toward the founding ideology of Israel stems from the what he calls for "impossibles" of Zionism, which essentially boils down to the assertion that Jewish existence can be best assured by creating a Jewish state.
His discussion of the four "impossibles," is full of misleading or false information, but his antithesis to Zionism, the four "possibles" is even worse.
Every one of his "possibilies" is full of distortions and extravagant claims that would have earned an F in Introduction to Comparative Politics. Ophir's assertion that Nazis exterminated the Jews not because they were stateless people but because of a perceived threat to Aryan purity, is probably the most egregious violation of his own logic. Such intellectual twisting and turning is not incidental, since Ophir and his cohorts understand that the extermination of six million Jews validated Zionism's dark predictions.
The description of how the Palestinians and Jews would live peacefully in one state could arguably win first prize in a competition for utopian political writing. Herzl naivete in Alteneuland can be written off as a product of nineteenth century romanticism; Ophir's ideological blinders that make him ignore the contemporary realities in the region cannot be excused.
For those who want to peruse the Holon exhibition online, will find a fairly eclectic and seemingly random display of a few documents and pictures going back to the 19th century. In the critical universe that Ophir and Azoulay inhabit, such material probably passes for critical digital art that "goes against the Zionist narrative;" those who do not share the couple's paradigm may wonder what the message is.
The person who should provide some explanations is Udi Edelman, the curator of the Holon center exhibition. Then again, since he is a current student of Ophir, he is likely to tow the critical party line of his professors.

The Israeli peace scholar Daniel Bar-Tal - for whom Galtung was a role-model - should have known that. Bar Tal, who was hired to teach and research child development in the School of Education at Tel Aviv University, quickly switched to peace research. In his new line of work, he has found that Israeli refusal to solve the conflict with the Palestinians stems from anxiety associated with the “Holocaust trauma” and/or “Masada syndrome.” As IAM reported, Bar-Tal’s focus on the alleged pathologies of the Israelis is convenient because it absolves him and other peace scholars from dealing with the phenomenon of Islamist violence.
Indeed, during the 2008 IDF operation in Gaza, Bar-Tal blasted the Israelis in an open letter: “my trust in humanity has been weakened, seeing the ease in which human beings rally for war, exercise blind patriotism, express desire for vengeance…and develop insensitivity for human life.” Interesting enough, Bar-Tal never lost trust in humanity when Israeli civilians were targeted by suicide bombers, when “ordinary Palestinians” lynched two Israeli soldiers and raised their bloody hands in a sign of triumph, or when women and children in Gaza celebrated a successful suicide attack (i.e. one that killed a lot of Israelis) by offering sweets in the streets.
Bar-Tal fealty to Galtung had continued despite the latter's strident attacks on Israel. As a leading peace activist (which included a stint as co-editor of the Palestine-Israel Journal- PIJ) and Director of the Walter Lebech Institute for Jewish-Arab Coexistence at Tel Aviv University, Bar-Tal, who became the chair of the Academic Committee, helped organize a 2006 conference where Galtung served as a keynote speaker. Bar-Tal set on the podium next to Galtung who launched into his standard Israel bashing routine. Reprinted in the PIJ, it accused Israel that during the war in Lebanon, "much bigger parts were the victims of collective punishment than Lidice in Czechoslovakia, Oradour-sur-Glane in France and Kortelisy in the Ukrain" (a reference to three notorious cases where the SS murdered the inhabitants and razed the villages in punitive raids). Surely, Bar-Tal was aware of Galtung’s mendacity, but the comparison was left unchallenged.
Possibly, he did not want to alienate Galtung, an iconic figure in the peace research community, which has showered Bar-Tal with accolades and prizes. In the path that Galtung pioneered, Bar Tal's research was highly esteemed as it fit the necessary requirement of finding fault with Israel only.
Bar-Tal should now rectify his past moral cowardice by denouncing Johan Galtung and his anti-Semitics rants. Bar-Tal credibility as a human being and scholar is at stake.

Redefining the Jewish State and the Hollowing Out of Palestinian Citizenship
This paper claims that recent legislative and judicial policies in Israel mirror efforts made to redefine the meaning of the Jewish state. The prospect boarders, the demographic composition, the political culture and the material resources are being remolded in order to meet a close nationalist and chauvinist meaning of the "Jewishness" of the Israeli state.

Ariella Azoulay and Adi Ophir (TAU, Minerva Humanities) have teamed up to produce yet another of their wholesale condemnations of Israel. Their long career as academic activists has been full of such one-sided polemics matched a determined effort to ignore the possibility that the Palestinians could have a role in perpetuating the conflict.
Their new book is a prime example of this particular polemical art. They hint darkly at the "deceptive denial of events" of 1948 and 1967, which, for the record, are some of the most analyzed episodes in Israeli history. As always, Palestinians are portrayed as innocent and (passive) victims of events, something that fits well the post-colonial paradigm of the authors.
That Azoulay and Ophir, among the most radical academics in Israel should mix scholarship and politics is expected. What is puzzling is how Ophir, who was hired to teach and research in his field of philosophy, ended writing polemical books about the Israeli-Palestinians conflict. As IAM has reported, the blame should be put at fit of Tel Aviv University for allowing Ophir and other radical faculty to neglect their responsibilities.

Yehouda Shenhav (TAU), a radical academic-cum-activist, has never separated his research from political views. He is part of a group of academics that demanded the creation of a unitary Palestinian-Jewish state and, more recently, a full right of return of the Palestinians with compensation for property. Shenhav has joined other radical scholars in a project to equate the Holocaust with the Palestinian Nabka. In his writings, Shenhav has used a neo-Marxist, critical paradigm to define political reality in Israel which, not surprisingly, he paints in the darkest possible colors.
His commentary on the social protest movement of 2011 is a case in point. He condemns the apolitical nature of the protest and the national consensus around it as fake because, in his view, such a consensus can only form because it represses the "real" social divisions of race, ethnicity and such. He calls the remarkable orderly, peaceful and harmonious demonstrations a "carnival," going so far as to compare it to medieval Christian carnivals where people could "blow off steam" without upsetting the authority system.
As for the Israeli political system, Shenhav's vision is even darker. He finds it be a democracy that covers up hard core apartheid and totalitarian elements and racist laws. Even the market economy that enabled Israel to survive the world-wide economic meltdown is deemed to be part of the totalitarian system.
Protected by academic freedom of speech and sustained by a decent salary, Shenhav, a veteran "shock jockey," has made a career of pontificating on provocative topics such as his demand that Mizrahim should be called "Arab Jews." When confronted by research that suggested that the Mizrahim do not consider themselves "Arab Jews," he used a variant of the Marxist "false consciousness" theory to claim that they are "in denial." Now he is disparaging the protesters by calling their movement a "carnival." For all his worry about totalitarianism, Shenahv has a totalitarian habit of telling people what they should think or do.
Shenhav's academic-political activism has been undoubtedly helped by the lax professional standards in social sciences and humanities. Hired to teach sociology of organizations, he spent many years of his career publishing on the Arab-Israeli conflict and other issues unrelated to his field. Unfortunately, Shenhav is not the only faculty to engage in this conduct, raising troubling questions about the promotion process at the university.

Ever since the publication of his book, The Invention of the Jewish People Shlomo Sand (TAU) has become a world traveler. His latest appearance, was in Sofia University, Bulgaria's oldest and most prestigious institution of higher education, where virtually the entire country's elite is being educated, Sand gave his standard stump speech: Jews are an invented people and Israel has no legitimate rights to Palestine. He added that Israel has ethnically cleansed not only Palestinians but people who do not consider themselves to be Jews. He ended with an appeal to the world to "save Israel from itself."
Sand's book is extremely popular in Europe; in the TV segment he is seen signing the Bulgarian translation of the book. IAM reported on a number of occasion, that critics have found Sand's book without factual merits and going against recent genetic evidence. But this is precisely the point; had Sand wrote a factually- based work, this once obscure lecturer in French cultural history would have never attained the status of an intellectual celebrity.
As Professor Yaakov Goren comments in his review of Sand, anti-Semitism sells. Goren reminds the readers that in 1899 Houston Stewart Chamberlain, published a book The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century where he "proved" the superiority of the Aryan race. Chamberlain, who greatly influenced the thinking of Hitler, wrote that the Jews were a mixture of inferior Hittite and Bedouin characteristics, adding that they "infuse Near Eastern poison into European body politic." Chamberlain's book became a huge bestseller and went through numerous editions. Goren adds that, like Chamberlain, Sand twisted the truth and provided malicious commentaries that make the book so attractive to countless critics of Israel. Sadly and ironically, whether Jews come from the Near East - as Chamberlain suggests - or have no connection to the region - as Sand would have it - they are still plagued by anti-Semitism and its modern version, anti-Israelism.

Professor Daniel Bar-Tal (School of Education, TAU) is one of the intellectual architects of the "it is all in their heads" approach for blaming the failure of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on Israel. Originally hired to teach consulting for young children, he switched to the more "glamorous" field of conflict resolution where he found that, traumatized by the Holocaust, the Israelis are consumed with perceptions of Palestinians as terrorist "others." Alternatively, Bar-Tal has postulated that Israelis are afflicted with the Massada complex, which hinders their ability to settle the conflict. Conveniently for Bar-Tal, the focus of these historical traumas absolves him for considering some contemporary factors like brutal terror attacks against Israeli civilians, repeated missile launches from Gaza and blood-chilling threats to wipe off Israel from the map of the world.
Bar-Tal, the recipient of this year's Nevitt Sanford Award in Political Psychology, would be well advised to read the paper of the 2002 Nevitt Sanford Award recipient, Professor Jerrold Post "When Hatred is Bread into the Bone: Psycho-Cultural Foundations of Contemporary Terrorism" to learn that threats are not only imagined but real.

Prof. Gadi Algazi (TAU, History) has used his considerable demagogic skills to provide an inflammatory and biased description of the long-range acoustic devise, known as the "sound cannon"). It was developed by an American corporation and used by the IDF during a demonstration in Hebron.
A quick perusal of Wikipedia would have revealed to him that the devise is deployed in a variety of settings, including deterring wildlife around airports, deterring pirates in Somalia, deterring Greenpeace ships from harassing Japanese whaling boats, as well as crowd dispersal around the globe.
The devise was sold to China, Poland and a host of other countries to break up demonstrations; it is considered a good substitute for more lethal methods. Police in the United States has used it routinely and so are police departments in countries to deal with soccer -related violence. Had the Egyptian policy been equipped with the devise, it could have prevented the death and injury of hundreds of soccer fans during a game in Port Said.
But to hear Algazi tell the story, the "sound cannon" is an "American-imperialist" devise to subjugate innocent protesters. He also misstate the impact of the devise; it is not designed to cause a permanent hearing loss, which, according to the specification, can occur only in rare circumstances when a person stands very close to the source of the sound.
In any event, it did not hurt Algazi and his fellow protesters in Hebron, who just "kept protesting." If lethal force was used, as is routine in Iran and Syria, he would not be able to go on protesting. Algazi has never discussed these brutal and bloody crackdowns, but one can assume that the protesters there would have been happy to face the "sound cannon" rather than the bullets and the artillery shell.

Reich generally seeks to avoid confrontation with political rivals, preferring to focus on archaeology. The exception is Prof. Rafi Greenberg of Tel Aviv University. Greenberg heads a group of critical archaeologists called Emek Shaveh, which has frequently taken Elad and Reich to task for exploiting archaeology for political ends. Reich retorts that Greenberg’s activity has caused the dismissal of the Palestinian laborers working at the dig. On this subject, he concurs with Elad’s view that until the leftists came to Silwan, peaceful coexistence prevailed there.
“All through the years I’ve made one demand of Elad, and that is that the workers be from Silwan,” says Reich. “I believe that whoever has the misfortune to live in an antiquities site ought to be able to profit from it. But when they þ[Emek Shavehþ] started up, there was pressure through the mukhtar, through Hamas. The only thing I want to know is if he [Greenbergþ] gave them þ[the workersþ] a good explanation. I think they deserve it.”
Prof. Greenberg declined to comment.

Yehouda Shenhav (TAU) is a leading neo-Marxist, critical scholar whose academic writings are replete with mind-bending references to post-colonial, post-modern, post-feminist, and other "post" phenomena, all culled from his favorite pantheon of critical French post-modern philosophers. Mercifully, in the article "Racism Explained to Our Children" his target audience is treated only to one critical scholar, Etiene Balibar, who coined the term neo-racism (also known as post-racism).
Based on Balibar, Shenhav advocates abandoning the term "race" in favor of "racialization" which he defines as an "the study of racist speech without being limited to the use of the term race." Liberated from the duty to show that a real instance of racial speech has occurred Shenhav proceeds to give a list of what he considers to be racial speech where race is not mentioned. He blames the government for committing a race crime by signaling Arabs for extra screening at the airport. He also claims that a comparison between Ehud Barak and the Moroccan- born Amir Peretz (pilot vs. truck driver) is race speech. For those who are puzzled by this thinking, using the mandate of critical theory of racialization, race speech is what Shenhav decides race speech is. One can of course doubt whether children can make such a complex analysis in a country like Israel where so many people are of mixed ethnic background. And how would one treat this comparison if, say, Barak had a Moroccan mother and a Polish father?
By clinging to outmodes ethnic categories and convoluted reasoning, Shenhav is not serving the cause of fighting racism. And there is the issue of hypocrisy, as Shenhav is part of the "double standards brigade" of Israeli academics; he deems Israel to be awash in hidden racism but has nothing to say about very overt forms of racism in Arab and Muslim societies. By practicing double standards, Shenhav undermines his own credibility and the credibility of the cause.
It is regrettable that ACRI decided to use Shenhav's article to educate children about this important subject.

Anat Matar (TAU) a leading radical scholar, participated in an illegal demonstration at Tel Aviv University on behalf of Islamic Jihad activist who was released from prison in the Shalit deal, but was detained again on security grounds. Following complaints from students, university authorities are investigating the legality of Matar's action.
Regardless of the outcome of the inquiry, it is clear that Matar has a long history of mixing academics with politics. Matar insists that Palestinian terrorists in Israeli jails should be considered political prisoners, thus turning Israeli authorities into grave violators of human rights and laws of war. As IAM reported, Matar's charges show complete ignorance of the Geneva Conventions and, worse, help to spread the libelous message that Israel is Nazi-like, apartheid state. Her new book, Threat, Palestinian Political Prisoners in Israel, co-written with Abeer Baker, is billed as a manual for staging an "international campaign for Palestinian political prisoners."
In investigating Matar's behavior, university authorities should also consider the fact that a busy political agenda keeps her from researching and publishing in the speciality for which she was hired for. This is a disservice to the students and the tax payers who support Tel Aviv University.

Gadi Algazi expresses his support with a group of Bedouins who failed to prove in court ownership of land. In a precedent-setting ruling on Sunday, the Beersheba District Court rejected six lawsuits brought by Beduin regarding private ownership of around 1,000 dunams of land in the Negev. Even after this ruling Algazi still believes that Al-Araqib belongs to the Bedouins.
This is not surprising as Algazi has repeatedly stated that Israel is a colonial state and the Bedouins cannot expect justice from the courts. Rather than relating the complexities of the land issue as discussed by the court, Algazi chooses to employ rhetoric and slogans that make Israel look like a Mediterranean version of apartheid era South Africa.

Prof. Daniel Bar- Tal (Tel Aviv University) is a political activist and a former co-editor of radical Palestine and Israel Journal. He is also one of the purveyors of the psychological theory which blames Israelis for the failure of peace- making, notably their alleged psychological trauma stemming from the Holocaust or, in another of his versions, with the Masada complex. Indeed, Bar Tal, who was hired to teach early childhood counseling, made a career by pushing his dubious theory. Those familiar with his writings note that he makes no mention of the possible role of the Palestinians in obstructing the peace process, or the role of Iran which successfully deployed Palestinian Islamist terror to sabotage Oslo.
This is not an accident, as Bar Tal is part of the radical fraternity that adheres to "it is all in their [Israeli] head" theory. Not surprisingly, the willingness to blame Israel turned Bar Tal into a hero in the peace and conflict resolution circles that likewise ignore the Islamist hard-liners. Of course, this is much more rewarding than doing research in early childhood development and much easier than convincing Hamas of the virtues of peaceful conflict resolution.

Shlomo Sand (History Department, TAU) is still basking in the fame of his book The Invention of the Jewish People which made him the darling of Iran and others foes of Israel. Ironically, since the publication of his book assorted analysts and at least one American politician took to claiming that the Palestinians are an "invented people," something that Sand seems to take in stride. In fact, he undermines the main thesis of his book, by conceding that nationalism all over is an invented phenomenon .
If Sand was more dedicated to facts he would have felt even more perturbed by an article from 2001, on the common genetic origins of Palestinians and Jews; the paper was withdrawn from a scientific journal because the authors, experts in genetics, wanted to score political points by asserting that Jews are not the "chosen people" and have no right to keep the Palestinians in a ghetto. In any event, the paper strikes a blow to Sand's thesis that most Israeli Jews do not descend from the ancient Hebrew people but rather are more recent converts to Judaism via the medieval Khazars.
Facts do not seem to interfere with the book Sand is currently writing either. Even by standards of a newly- minted expert on the issue, Sand's misrepresentations of the "what went wrong" with the Oslo peace process are egregious. He accuses Rabin of bargaining in bad faith and of trying to create "Bantustans." All this in spite of irrefutable evidence that during the last round of negotiations in January 2001, the Labor party offered the Palestinians the so-called Clinton Parameters; a return of almost all of the West Bank, and a territorial swap for the blocks of Jewish settlements and a division of Jerusalem. The talks were derailed because of Arafat's insistence on the right of return of Palestinians, a request that tripped up Prime Minister Ehud Olmert talks with Mahmoud Abbas years later.

Ariella Azoulay (TAU, Minerva Humanities) traveled to Brown University to lecture as guest of The Departments of Comparative Literature & Modern Culture and Media, about the Right to the Archive. As IAM posted recently, Azoulay's article Archive was published by The New School for Social Research, on its Political Concepts: A Critical Lexicon web page.
Azoulay, a leading practitioner of neo-Marxist, critical paradigm, that gives scholars the right to create "narratives" unrelated to the empirical reality, has used this license to charge Israel with a long list of crimes against the Palestinians. In "Archive" she puts Jacques Derrida, a critical philosopher to even more creative uses. First, she proclaims that the military information stolen by Anat Kam should be treated as an "archive", more precisely Israeli Archives of Execution [of Palestinians]. In the fashion of Derrida, Kam is said to be an archon, the guardian of the archives who should be commended for the act of "sharing the archive" with the public.
Next, Azoulay uses the ink flag planted by IDF soldiers in Um Rashrash, one of the iconic pictures of the 1948 war, to deconstruct the "true reality" behind it. In her view, there "was no victory" there and in other places because "we gradually discover that most of the violent events did not tip the scales in battles between two sides but rather cleansed the body politic of the governed and constituted the law that institutionalized the graphic, economic, social, urban and political reality that this cleansing had produced."
In plain English, there was no real fighting between the two sides, just an act of ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, she claims. Unfortunately, Azoulay is using her academic credentials and her affiliation with Tel Aviv University to mislead students who may not realize that the realities of critical scholarship are just "imagined."

Aeyal Gross (TAU, Law) has expressed his discomfort with the theory of "pinkwashing Israel," that is the notion that Israel's liberal treatment of the LGBT community is a "fig leaf" covering its domination of Palestinians. At the same time, he has run into a problem trying to explain how some leftist LGBT activists can engage in bashing Israel while giving a pass to the harsh treatment of gays in Muslim countries.
The torturous logic of his essay - written in reaction to the LGBT conference in the Netherlands - is a clear indication that inherent contradictions in such stance cannot easily be resolved. On the one hand, he uses the "pinkwashing" argument to explain that the liberal treatment of gays by the Dutch authorities is a cover for anti-Muslim sentiments. On the other, he is hard-pressed to admit to the plight of gays who are in Iran and across the Middle East region. Gross and other participants understand very well that publicly acknowledging this fact would be complicating their claim that all criticism of Islam is pure Islamophobia. More to the point, fear of potential Islamist retaliation cannot be ruled out, especially in the Netherlands where outspoken critics were either killed or forced to flee the country.

Anat Matar (TAU), a veteran political activist has done it again! As IAM reported, Matar, the chair of the Israeli Action Committee for Palestinian Prisoners, has been waging a campaign to classify Palestinian prisoners, including notorious terrorists, as political prisoners. She has also minimized their crimes, by dismissing them as stone throwers or political advocates. Matar, is clueless about international law. Geneva Conventions do not extend protections afforded to prisoners of war to purveyors of terrorism, let alone defines them as political prisoners. Indeed, the Conventions consider targeting of civilian population to be a crime.
If Matar, who teaches at the Department of Philosophy, can be excused for her ignorance of law, her paltry academic record in her own field should raise questions. She has been a senior lecturer for almost a decade. Is it possible that political activism leaves her little time to research and publish to merit a promotion? If so, the students in the department and the Israeli tax payers deserve better!

Amal Jamal (TAU) is one of the neo-Marxist, critical scholars who credit Michel Foucault for their academic direction. As repeatedly reported by IAM, these academics negate the idea that objective, empirical and verifiable reality exists. Instead, they prefer the concept of "narrative" as in "everyone has their own narrative."
The circumstances surrounding the killing of Mohammed al Dura are a case in point. For more than a decade, the French courts have been kept busy with litigations stemming from a charge that al Dura died from a Palestinian bullet and that the television station that filmed the incident misrepresented the truth. But, according to Jamal, the truth is on no consequence: "it is of little importance whether the bullets that killed Mohammed were Israeli or Palestinian." What matters is that "these images contain all the history of the second intifida, the Palestinian tragedy, the inhuman conditions in which they live and the everyday nature of the force deployed against them by Israel."
Jamal's "narrative" shared by most Palestinians is quite handy; it absolves Yasser Arafat from any responsibility for the failure of the Oslo peace process and for starting a violent uprising as a cover up. Unfortunately, Jamal plays into the political culture of the Palestinians who blames everyone but themselves for all their misfortunes.

In The Chronotope, Shenhav mixes a type of post-modern psychological sensibility with his own unique suggestions to assuage it. To begin with, he seeks to place the fate of the Palestinians in the 1948 war outside real space and time; “the disaster did not occur at one specific time or in one specific place. The Nakba is an ongoing process that takes a variety of forms; it is not an isolated event frozen in time.” Furthermore, he claims that for the Palestinians the Nakba continues to this day, as manifested in disparate events like the reprisals of the 1950’s, life under the military regime in the 1950s, the 1967 war (Naqsa) and recent events, when “inspectors from the Israel Lands Authority and 1,500 police officers” come to demolish the unrecognized Bedouin village of Al Araqib, and even Operation Cast Lead in Gaza. As a result, Shenhav diagnoses the Nakba as “insidious trauma:" that “unlike post trauma, which refers to the traumatic effect in the present of a single event in the past, insidious trauma is characterized by continuous occurrences of the event in the present.”

Following the ban of the conference held in Paris 8, entitled "Israel: an apartheid state?" Mediapart publishes a letter from a collective of one hundred researchers and personalities...
Attention Binczak Pascal, President of the University of Paris 8
Mr. President,
We would hereby like to express our dismay at your decision to withdraw permission you had previously given to the symposium "New approaches sociological, historical and legal to call for an international boycott Israel: an apartheid state? ", to be held on 27 and 28 February next at your institution.
This decision seems particularly serious because it threatens free speech and academic freedom. The reasons that you call, including the risk of "disturbing public order", we do not seem very convincing in terms of the implications of your decision.
Indeed, we have learned that the University management had knowledge of the conference program and speakers list before giving its consent, and the Fund for Solidarity and Development Initiatives College was even awarded a grant of 2500 euros to the initiative.
It is therefore due to pressure or threats from outside you have decided to backtrack.This seems particularly worrying: University Must submit to political pressure, of whatever nature? Is it not precisely the func'tion of allowing that academic freedom can be exercised in the best conditions?

Anat Matar (TAU) decided to ignore the Knesset legislation making support for BDS illegal.
Matar, a long time radical activist, has lend her support to the upcoming Israeli Apartheid Week at the University of Alberta, Canada, organized by Ramzy Baroud, a Palestinian-American journalist and a pioneer in the BDS movement. Baroud made a career of producing highly biased material on Israel; as as an editor of Palestine Chronicle, a radical publication, he finds Mahmoud Abbas too moderate. Among other goals, the Apartheid Week calls attention to the BDS movement.
Matar is scheduled to appear on March 07, 2012 (via Skype) on a panel discussing women's view on "occupation and apartheid."
The Tel Aviv University authorities should investigate the case of Matar.

Jerusalem January 29, 2012: Al Arakib protest eviction in front of JNF offices
Chants: The trees for the JNF are soldiers of the government!
Gadi Algazi, Hithabrut-Tarabot: At the forefront of the struggle for democracy in Israel are the Arabs of the Negev. Therefore, at the frontline of the struggle for democracy in Israel are the Palestinian citizens of Israel, women and men.
Sheikh Sayiakh Al-Touri: I tell you, our foundation and forefathers are in the Negev. And they are in El Araqib.
Gadi Algazi: We are here to make sure that the JNF stops its campaign of forestation which has nothing to do with making the desert bloom, its campaign of dispossession, intending to ensure that the Bedouin citizens can not cultivate their land.
So we have to stop the JNF if we want to live here as equals, Arabs and Jews in this country.
Reuven Aberjil, Hithabrut-Tarabot: One who denies the Naqba, denies the presence of Arabs in the state of Israel.
From here begins the racism, from here comes apartheid.
Occupation, settlements and social freedom: how to face the disposession process?
Hithabrut-Tarabot Jerusalem branch in AIC invites the public for a discussion on an important and difficult question. For the Palestinians - As our partners in the left at the West Bank reminding us - The heart of the dispute is the ongoing process of settlements, that threatens the chances of development and freeing from the occupation. No doubt that the Israeli authorities use poverty and the poor people of the country and its discrimination - against Mizrahim, new immigrants, Ethiopians - to advance the process of settlements and to tie them to the process of dispossession.

Dr. Dan Rabinowitz is a senior lecturer in the department of sociology and anthropology at Tel Aviv University. He also teaches at theCentral European University in Budapest. He is a member of the Gisha Board of Directors. According to NGO Monitor, Gisha employs “apartheid rhetoric” when discussing Israel. The head of Gisha, Sari Bashi, has accused the IDF of “enacting policies in order to empty the West Bank of Palestinians because of Israeli territorial claims.”
Rabinowitz has a long record of radical activism. He has come out in favor of supporting boycotts against Israel and of indicting Israeli political leaders for war crimes.” In October 2008, Rabinowitz spoke at an anti-Israel conference on Jerusalem in the Hague, Netherlands, where he explained how Israelis legitimize “repression” of Palestinians. That year he also signed the Righteous Jews petition, which commemorates Palestinians who have been “depopulated, dispossessed, humiliated, tortured, and murdered in the name of political Zionism.” This petition goes on to claim that “from its founding in 1897 the Zionist endeavors to "pump in" Jews and "pump out" Palestinians from this land have been the root cause of bloodshed and conflict.

The stability of the future secular, democratic Israeli-Palestinian state would depend not only on it being truly democratic, but also on the strictest constitutional separation between state and religion. This should not mean forced secularization or placing restrictions on the free exercise of religion, but it does mean that the state will neither sanction nor subsidize religious activities and institutions, nor will it tolerate religious practices that are discriminatory towards women. In the present state of affairs this idea sounds utterly utopian, because both Israeli and Palestinian societies are becoming more and more religious and suspicious of each other. But as the young activists of Tahrir Square and elsewhere have shown, powerful liberal, democratic, emancipatory undercurrents exist underneath the placid façade of many Middle Eastern societies. These forces, we are convinced, exist in Israel and Palestine too and, given the opportunity, could transform the political reality and bring an end to the hundred-year old Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Aeyal Gross (TAU, Law), a leading member of the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual & Transgender (GLBT) movement, is the intellectual architect of "pinkwashing," a far-fetched theory stipulating that Israel's liberal gay policies are a ploy to cover its mistreatment of Palestinians. As IAM previously reported, such accusations reached the pages of the New York Times and other mass media.
The reality, of course, is very different. A few years ago, the Ministry of Tourism, launched a campaign to attract gay tourism, a model that was proved successful in selected cities in other tourist destinations.
But the culture of tolerance goes well beyond money. Gays serve openly in the military and in the parliament and enjoy many civil rights. Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and other cities host annual gay parades attended by thousands of people.
Moreover, Israel has become a refuge for gay Palestinians fleeing persecution and death. A report of the Legal Clinic at Tel Aviv Law Faculty "Nowhere to Run: Gay Asylum Seekers in Israel" describes in harrowing details their brutal treatment at the hands of the police, Islamist vigilantes and even their own families. The fate of gays in theHamas-ruled Gaza Strip is especially daunting, reflecting the broader trends in the Middle East in the increasinglyIslamist Middle East. Gross is well aware of this reality as he contributed suggestions to the report. His continuous support for the "pinkwashing" theory is thus highly hypocritical but not surprising. For Gross and other radical critics, Israel cannot do anything right and the Palestinians cannot do anything wrong.

Jacques Rancière is a French political philosopher, who supports the Palestinian cause while ignoring the fact that Palestinians had defied the UN Partition Resolution and initiated a war which they had the misfortune to lose. Considering that they were led by Haj Amin al Husseini, a close ally of Hitler, it is not hard to imagine what would have happened if the Jews had lost.
It is not surprising that Ariella Azoulay of the TAU Minerva Humanities Photo-Lexic project invited him and offered to co-sponsor his talk. As IAM repeatedly reported, Azoulay is a hard-line post-Zionist scholar who uses her art to smear Israel. It is thus highly ironic that Ranciere declined the invitation in solidarity with the boycott movement.

Radical academics have often complained about Israel discriminatory treatment of Palestinians with regard to water use. As IAM recently reported, Tel Aviv University lecturer, Dr. Anat Matar included the alleged theft of Palestinian water in her definition of the apartheid regime. Indeed, many of these claims have been adopted by human rights organization and even made it into a recent report by Foreign Affairs committee of the French parliament that accused Israel of "water apartheid."
The following report, based on newly released data by the Water Authority negates accusations of "water apartheid."

Professor Adi Ophir, a philosopher at Tel Aviv University, is the academic director of the Lexicon Project at the Minerva Center, described as the study of "foundational concepts" in political theory. He is one of the organizers of a conference at Columbia University's prestigious Society of Fellows of Humanities designed to popularize the Project in the United States. The Society offers a doctoral program for American and foreign students from countries as far as Brazil and Australia and its functions attract an elite New York audience.
The Lexicon group explains that "through the critical interpretation and redefinition of these concepts the group seeks to broaden the horizons of the theoretical thought and at the same time to shed light on present political conditions." To accomplish this goal, the Lexicon employs a number of fellows, ostensibly to provide new insights into issues of theory and practice.
However, as IAM repeatedly reported, Lexicon fellows and their associates have produced some of the most delegtimizing critique of Israel. Ophir found Israel to be on the same ontological plane of evil as Nazi Germany. Ariella Azoulay, a "lexo-photographer" has "imagined" torture when describing a pictures of Palestinian prisoners and called Anat Kam, the solider imprisoned for leaking secret information an "archivist" who shared the IDF "archives" with the world. Hagar Kotef argues that the checkpoints are a destructive mean of control and therefore violence against them seem to be justified.

Moshe Zuckermann, one of the most radical academics at Tel Aviv University has been profiled by IAM before. As noted, he is a self-proclaimed anti-Zionist and a follower of Norman Finkelstein who accused Israel of creating a "Holocaust industry" to further its political goals. In his 2010 book Antisemit! Zuckermann, a son of Holocaust survivors from Poland, repeats the charge that Israel has used anti-Semitism and the Holocaust as an instrument of dispossessing and oppressing the Palestinian people. Working with the radical, Munich-based Salam, Shalom: Palestine-Israel Working Group headed by Eckhard Lenner and Christoph Steinbrink, Zuckermann has propagated the notion that Israel is an extreme abuser of human rights with regard to the Palestinians. He has also emphasized that Germany, and to a lesser degree other Western countries, was cowed into supporting Israel because of political exploitation of the Holocaust
Like ABNA, IRNA and the London-based Press TV, CASMII (Campaign Against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran) is known to repeat Tehran's extreme hard-line on Israel. Asserting that Iran's nuclear program is peaceful, the group has accused Israel of fabricating evidence, misleading public opinion and pushing the United States toward a war with Iran. Zuckermann, whose writings are regularly featured on the CASMII website, has supported this view. In an interview given to a German newspaper, he accused the Israeli government of a hysterical reaction to Tehran's nuclear project. Zuckermann's usefulness had earned him a place in the CASMII- sponsored International Rosa Luxemburg Conference in Berlin on January 8, 2011, a show of force of the pro-Palestinian- pro-Iranian network. By turning into a CASMII star performer, Zuckermann is on his way to becoming the "Israeli Norman Finkelstein."

Ariella Azoulay (TAU) has used the work of critical scholars to charge Israel with a long list of crimes against the Palestinians. In her article "Archive" she puts Jacques Derrida, a critical scholar pioneer to even more creative uses. To begin with, she proclaims that the military information stolen by Anat Kam is an "archive", more precisely Israeli Archives of Execution [of Palestinians]. In the fashion of Derrida, Kam is said to be an archon, the guardian of the archives who should be commended for the act of "sharing the archive" with the public.
Next, Azoulay uses the ink flag planted by IDF soldiers in Um Rashrash, one of the iconic pictures of the 1948 war, to deconstruct the "true reality" behind it. In her view, there "was no victory" there and in other places because "we gradually discover that most of the violent events did not tip the scales in battles between two sides but rather cleansed the body politic of the governed and constituted the law that institutionalized the graphic, economic, social, urban and political reality that this cleansing had produced."
In plain English, there was no real fighting between the two sides, just an act of ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, she claims.

The article is written by a professor in Tel Aviv University and a PhD student from BGU using the tools of critical geography, a post-modernist approach pioneered by Oren Yiftachel in the 1990s. Such critical methodology enabled the authors to "demonstrate" that security considerations had no role in building the separation fence. Indeed, they all but dismiss impact that terror attacks against Jews in Jerusalem including the infamous bombing of the Sbarro restaurant had anything to do with the construction of the barrier. This is not an accidental omission, as critical geography is foremost a critique of all and sundry Israeli behavior. For those, however, who remember facts, the decision to build the separation force first entertained by the Rabin government in 1995 when it became clear that the Palestinian Authority could not prevent terrorism and massive theft of automobiles and agricultural equipment. The bloody Second Intifida in which thousands of civilians died or wounded, clinched the deal.
Fenser and Shlomo need to be reminded that from the perspective of fighting terrorism, the barrier proved a remarkable good strategy.

A conference entitled “The Dynamics of Images in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict” featuring Gideon Levy etc., was hosted jointly by the French Research Center in Jerusalem and by Tel Aviv University on November 7 and 8, 2011. At this conference, Dr. Daniel Dor of Tel Aviv University, Dr. Zohar Kamft of Hebrew University, Prof. Ilan Greilsammer of Bar Ilan University and Dr. Yael Munk of the Open University gave presentations that promoted post-Zionist arguments. IAM covered their talks.

Ariella Azoulay, describes herself as an artist, but her "art" is questionable, at times pure anti-Israeli propaganda, hosted by Palestinian art institutions in Europe and elsewhere. Her latest book on the destruction of Palestinian life during the 1947-9 war was published by Verso, a self-described radical press based in London that caters to other radical Israeli academics.
Azoulay's penchant for comparing the fate of the Palestinian to that of European Jewry during the Holocaust is well documented. The following article about Dr. Geroges Didi-Hubmerman, a foremost art critic and scholar who, among others, wrote about the infamous photos taken by Jews from the Sonderkommando in Auschwitz documenting piles of bodies of women and children is a case in point. Azouly's used the occasion of his lecture in Tel Aviv to make a connection between the Holocaust and the treatment of Palestinians.
This should not come as a surprise, since Azoulay and her fellow radicals have tried for years to establish "moral equivalency" between Nazi Germany and Israel. Her brand of critical scholarship which stipulates that there is no accepted truth, just "narratives" makes such comparisons easy. Still, any comparison between the Holocaust and the 1948 war is a disgrace.

Some two weeks ago, Haaretz educational reporter Talila Nesher used a sensationalist headline to denounce Tel Aviv University for "spying on students" (see below). Nesher wrote that security officers perused a YouTube clip (filmed by Social TV,) of a large group of students who planned to protest at the Sourasky Library, in order to identify individual perpetrators. Nesher took special exception to the fact that the security officer asked professors to help them identify students that might have been enrolled in their classes; she felt that TAU tried to turn them into "spies."
Instead of shrill attacks, Nesher should have provided a more balanced story. The group had no permit to stage a protest and, according to the authorities, planned to occupy the library and barricade itself there. Among its many demands, "to the university, the municipality and the state" the students called to reduce or abolish tuition. When similar demands where made more than a decade ago, Professor Moshe Kaveh, president of Bar-Ilan University, wrote that in cases where tuition was abolished or minimized, academic excellence was severely undermined. Kaveh based his argument on research in a number of countries which pointed to this conclusion.
Moreover, the Sourasky Operation, also known as the "Social University" is a movement sponsored by MAKI (the Communist Party) and HADASH which are trying hard to revive last summer's social protest.
"Social University" attracted the support of some well known radical-leftist professors on campus including Adi Ophir, Rachel Giora, Yehouda Shenhav, Daniel Bar-Tal, Moshe Zuckerman, Shlomo Sand, Dana Olmert and others.

TAU Professor Gadi Algazi has once again ventured into the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in order to delegitimize the state of Israel. Not surprisingly, his version of events is replete with half- truths, misrepresentation and misinformation.
In January 1949 the government sold one million dunam of Palestinian land to the Jewish National Fund; with an additional 300,000 sold subsequently. Up to 1962 the JNF paid some 30 million Israeli pounds to the government. The JNF used the land to resettle immigrants from Europe and the Arab counties; the law was patterned on a similar Pakistan and India arrangement where 16 million refugees were dispossessed by the bloody conflict between the Hindus and the Muslims. In 1953, the Knesset passed a law regulating the expropriation of Arab Palestinian land which also mandated compensations. The Israeli Arabs resisted, but the Israeli government exerted some pressure in order to complete the process. Left wing Israeli parties have protested the law and the process of confiscation. Years later Dorit Beinish, the Supreme Court justice, wrote that the legislation hurt the Israeli Arabs and the ideal of private property, but should be understood in the context of the unique historical circumstances that led to the creation of the State of Israel. Beinish noted that such a law would have serious legal challenges today.
Indeed, Algazi makes no references to the circumstances of the 1948-9 war and the history of WWII and its aftermath that triggered massive population movements.

Paz-Fuchs errs fundamentally in applying Fuller’s eight procedural rules to the military legislation in the territories in that the rules were never intended to apply to military legislation. Moreover, several, indeed most, of Paz-Fuchs’s examples relate not to military legislation but to military practice (placement of roadblocks/checkpoints, targeted killings, the Security Barrier, and so forth), to which Fuller’s rules are irrelevant.
In numerous instances, Paz-Fuchs’s alleged statement of facts is inaccurate: the Security Barrier’s route has, in fact, been changed following Supreme Court decisions, targeted killings are not as such illegal, Israel has repeatedly claimed that the territories are disputed territory, and has, indeed, annexed sections of the West Bank to Jerusalem and has continuously claimed that the settlement blocs will be part of Israel in any agreement between the two sides. In addition, contrary to Paz-Fuchs's allegations, Israel has shown its willingness to withdraw from territory.
Rather than conduct a fair and honest review of military legislation, and military practice in the territories, Paz-Fuchs blatantly misrepresented and misused Fuller’s procedural rules to advance his political agenda.

The requirement of Rule 3 is clarity. Paz-Fuchs’ declarations and theorizing on Israeli legislation in the territories is anything but clear, and his political polemic is superficial, faulty and irrelevant to Rule 3.
He speaks of the “introduction of vague formulas into legislation and jurisdiction” and a “vague system of relations, loyalties and alliances,” but gives no applicable example. He claims Israel is vague regarding the status of the territories, which vagueness, he contends, enables Israel to sanction acts that, absent the vagueness, would be clearly unlawful. His own argument is undermined by such vagueness.

In sum, Paz-Fuchs confuses orders/procedures with rules/law that Fuller’s procedural natural law theory relates to. As noted, the examples that Paz-Fuchs has furnished have been expressed in sufficiently general terms to comport with Fuller’s rule of generality.

Israel Academia Monitor has initiated a new program aimed at tracking the contribution of Israeli professors to lawfare (legal warfare), defined as the use of international law and human rights conventions to delegitimize the state of Israel in the international arena.
IAM believes that too little attention has been paid to this highly effective strategy.
The following article is a detailed rebuttal to a lecture which Dr. Amir Paz-Fuchs (Ono Academic Center and Tel Aviv University's Human Rights Clinic) delivered at a conference co-sponsored by the Ono Academic Center and the Law Faculty at Columbia University. The lecture was posted on Youtube and widely disseminated.

For decades now, the radical leftist academics has concentrated their main effort on advocating a one state solution to the Palestinian problem and warning about fascism in Israel. However, the recent economic upheaval in Europe and the United States has revived its dream of a socialist world. The Left Bank, an Alternative Cultural Center has been particularly active; it sponsored the fourth annual Marxist conference and a number of meeting on "Left Perspectives on the International Crisis of Capitalism."
The lectures in Tel Aviv featuring Professor Avishai Ehrlich (HUJ) and Dr. Efraim Davidi (BGU & TAU), a member of the Israeli Communist Party, is billed as a review of the anti-capitalist protest movement around the world and in Israel. Those familiar with the somewhat opaque Marxist lingo would notice the particular elation of the organizers. They are confident that the 1975 prediction by Jurgen Habermas, the iconic German neo-Marxist philosopher, about the "Coming Crisis of Capitalism" is just around the corner. These true believers are willing to overlook the fact that it was the Soviet Union and not the capitalist West that had collapsed since Habermas published his opus.
They also seem to defy reality today.

Israel has a liberal record on GLBT issues; the Israeli Defense Force was one of the first military forces in the world to allow openly gay and lesbian soldiers to serve in its ranks. Members of the GLBT community are represented in the Knesset and are prominent in the cultural life of the country. In 2005 the Tourism Ministry took a lead in welcoming gay visitors. This situation contrasts with the fate of gays in many Muslim countries including the West Bank and Gaza strip, where they are harassed, persecuted and often sentenced to death.
For Gross and his fellow radical academics, such a comparison is threatening as it undermines their effort to paint Israel's human rights record in black.
Enter "pink" to the rescue. Gross is the "intellectual father" of the theory of "Pinkwashing Israel;" it asserts that the government has used the gay community to hide its abysmal human rights record with regard to Palestinians and other minorities.
Gross's ploy seems to be working; it has enabled the anti-Israel community around the world to ignore serious human rights violations in Muslim societies. Indeed, a recent op-ed in the New York Times quotes Gross and repeats his argument that gay rights are a tool of Israeli public relations propaganda and bashes Israel for its human rights record

Prima facie, the Berlin seminar organized by the ZFL in conjunction with the Lexicon for Political Theory led by Adi Ophir (TAU) "Rewriting Political Terms, Rewriting Political Concepts" seems innocuous enough and far removed from the usual anti-Israel rhetoric of critical scholars. After all, what can be wrong when a group of academics wants to discuss concepts like "animal," "suffering" or indeed the concept of "concept" itself.
However, the list of Israeli participants and some the concepts scheduled for analysis warrant a closer look. Adi Ophir, has placed the Holocaust and the Palestinian Nakba within the same ontological plane of "suffering" and "evil." Michal Givoni has argued that witnessing/testimony should transcend its standard, legal-empirical meaning to embrace "moral witnessing." This form requires the moral witness to denounce the "evil" lurking behind, her term for Nazi-like, Israeli oppression of the Palestinians. Anat Matar has called for a new concept of the "university," one that would depart from objectivity and neutrality to become a bastion of intellectual elites like herself who know what the real "truth" is and can transform society accordingly.

Ariella Azoulay (Minerva Humanities Center, TAU) made a career out of producing one-sided narratives of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Her medium of choice- photography and her critical scholarship methodology - lend themselves to a particularly pernicious way of misrepresenting reality. On one occasion she displayed "torture photographs" [of a group of Palestinians arrested by Israeli security forces]. She asserted that even though the images do not depict actual torture, they should be considered "modes of torture."
Her London exhibition is equally telling in this respect. Azoulay presents pictures of ruined Palestinian structures [and lives], a price paid to achieve a "utopian Zionist theory of a Jewish homeland." She blames the Jews for the Palestinian nakba (catastrophe) and laments that neither side can explain how such a deep seated conflict took root.
This message is ingenious at best and ignorant at worse. The Palestinian leader Haj Amin al Husseini had consistently resisted a compromise solution and, when WWII broke out, teamed up with Hitler to bring the "final solution" to the Jews of Palestine. Even after the collapse of Nazi Germany, al Husseini - still the undisputed leader of his people - would not settle for anything less than full sovereignty over Palestine. The Palestinians rejected the 1947 U.N. partition proposal and with the help of Arab states, launched a war of annihilation against the new Jewish state. All along, al Husseini managed to eliminate [often physically] more moderate leaders. Israel won the war forcing the Palestinians to suffer the consequences of the decision taken by their belligerent and misguided leader.
Azoullay omission of the kind of Islamism represented by al Husseini and more recently, by Hamas is not coincidental. The anti-Semitic and genocidal beliefs harbored by significant elements of the Palestinian population is not a pretty picture. The veteran photographer knows that very well.

Professor Gadi Algazi (TAU) is a long time political activist who uses his academic position to misrepresent historical facts and contemporary policies to support the paradigm that Israel is an apartheid state.
His address on expropriation and destruction of Israel's Bedouins in al Araqib is a case in point. He writes that these and other Bedouins can claim property rights retroactively to Ottoman times. This is a gross misrepresentations of the complex legal structure of Ottoman land laws.
As a detailed analysis of Professor Haim Sandberg indicates, (only small parts of the Negev expanse were classified as fit for habitation and thus available for private ownership. The British Mandatory authorities advanced the process of transferring title deeds but even so, the area under ownership was limited.
There is little doubt that the creation of Israel complicated this process as the new state had to weight the rights of the Bedouins with the needs of other segments of the society. As Sandberg points out, this balancing act is especially hard when it involves a nomadic population whose heritage and traditional life-style mandates an extra-large land expanse. The Israeli authorities, like other countries that had to put limits on their nomadic populations, have struggled with this issue for many decades with mixed results.
Algazi's address does not convey any of these problems; on the contrary, he adjusts the facts to fit the apartheid paradigm. Amnesty International and the International League of Human Rights in Berlin -the event's sponsors - would be better served by choosing a less biased expert.

Dr. Yeal Munk is a lecturer of Cinema in both the Israeli Open University and Tel Aviv University. Her Ph.D supervisors were the anti-Zionists Prof. Judd Ne'eman and Dr. Orly Lubin. Munk will deliver a talk in the event in Tel Aviv University entitled The Dynamics of Images in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, organized with the French Research Center in Jerusalem. Her lecture is “Breaking the Silence”: reflections on Israeli soldiers’ guilt and responsibility, where she will be speaking about the "soldiers-victimizers confessing their crimes".

Prof. Neta Ziv is the director of The Cegla Clinical Law Programs at the Buchmann Faculty of Law, Tel Aviv University.
She was a board member and Vice President of The New Israel Fund.
Who Profits: Did Carmel Winery stop buying grapes from Susya’s vineyards?
Neta Ziv:
Nice! Last year they denied buying grapes from the Settlements! Blanket denial and especially regarding Susya Grapes. It seems there is no coordination between the director and the spokesperson responsible for the image of public relations....

Dr. Orly Lubin (TAU) is a radical activist who has used her academic position to delegitimize Israel in the international arena. Among her many proclamations and petitions is one presented to foreign embassies during Operation Cast Lead. Signed by "citizens of Israel" it urged the international community to stop the "criminal" conduct of Israel and called the world "not to allow the brutal occupation."
Lubin's participation in the Zochrot project, which seeks to advance the right to return of Palestinians to Israel proper, is emblematic of the mixture of academics and politics. The Zochrot symposium promises to "use the idea of language as a medium for the generation of spatial change... and the way in which these discourses are involved in the promotion of a discourse of return."

In 2007 UCC came close to passing a resolution on boycotting Israel and individual churches have been involved in local pro-Palestinian/Israel boycott initiatives.
Yet, its concern for the human rights of Palestinian has apparently never extended to others in the Middle East. Neither the UCC movement or the First Congregational Church has spoken out against the killing of Christians in Egypt and other countries in the region. The Church has not spoken out on the fate of a pastor whom the regime in Iran condemned to death because he had converted to Christianity as a young man. The Church has not protested the fate of homosexuals who are hunted and killed, sometimes in gruesome public executions and does not acknowledge that those in Gaza have been forced to seek protection in Israel.
As a philosopher, Dr. Anat Biletzki, a featured speaker at the Church, should be aware that double standards and hypocrisy are at the root of stereotyping and hatred in the world. As for the First Congregational Church, it should be aware that judging Jews by different standards is a staple of classic anti-Semitism.

Professor Uri Hadar (Psychology, TAU), a long- time political activist who supports academic boycott of Israeli universities, uses what he describers as "complex hermeneutic" to explain Israeli "ethnic brutality" toward Palestinians. The post-modern hermeneutic enterprise- associated with Michel Foucault, Jacques Lakan and Jacques Derrida- strives to unmask the concealed power interests of surface realities and texts that record them. This process of deconstruction is partial to non-empirical tools such as speculative and allusive thoughts. In radical psychology, also known as post-cognitive psychology, such hermeneutics enable the scholar to deconstruct reality in a highly autonomous and subjective way.
Using the tools of radical psychology, Hadar purports to "demonstrate" that Jewish brutality toward the Palestinians is equivalent to the Holocaust. Indeed, in his view, the Palestinians replaced the Jews as the paradigmatic sacrifice, they are the new "sacrificial lamb" of the Jews.
Hadar's essay is part of a project by critical, post-Zionist scholars to equate the treatment of Palestinians with the Holocaust.

Professor Yehuda Shenhav (TAU), who made a career out of portraying the alleged Zionist abuse of Jewish Arabs (his term for the Mizrahim), has "branched out" into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. More recently, Shenhav has been involved in a cooperative project with Zochrot to advocate the return of Palestinian refugees to Israel.
In an essay, "Chronotope of Refugee Return," Shenhav claims that Nakba is not limited to the events of 1948, but should be considered an ongoing "insidious trauma." To heal this trauma he urges the return of the refugees as part of a broader process of "post-Westphalia" sovereignty; Israel would relinquish its sovereign rights in favor of a "more decentralized and fluid" structure. It is into this newly created space that the Palestinian refugees would return.
The Zochrot exhibition is designed to offer practical solutions for the return of the refugees.

Since its publications in 2009 Shlomo Sand’s book, The Invention of the Jewish People, has received enormous exposure. Sand is a virtual godsend to a whole array of anti- Semites who have spun the theory that Jews are actually decedents of Khazars converts in order to prove a host of anti-Jewish causes. Not surprisingly, some of the “Jews-as Khazar” websites now boast references to the book. Sand has also become a favorite of radical anti-Israel circles who can now “prove” that Jews have no right to Israel. Recognizing a market for his ideas, Sand, a tireless self-promoter, has given dozen of speeches, participating in numerous round-tables and granted scores of interviews to sympathetic outlets.

Ariel Handel, a fellow at the Minerva Humanities Center, PhD under the supervision of Professors Adi Ophir and Tovi Fenster, uses clever epistemological and linguistic devices pioneered by Ophir to accomplish two things. First he creates a straw argument, namely that the "space" is not an "empty vessel;" as if the existence of the Palestinians in the territories have been somewhat overlooked or "disappeared" by Israel. Second, he conveniently uses "space," "movement regime," and other fancy terminology to perform his own little "disappearance" trick; Handel does not find it necessary to admit that Palestinian terrorists have crossed the territories to carry out suicide attacks against civilians.

After some further exchange on her work, the interview comes to a close with music of Gilad Atzmon played in the background. Matar adds that Atzmon, her former student, is a very involved political activist in London. The show closes to the tunes of “Cultures of Resistance, Jenin.”
Matar’s claim that Palestinians detained for acts of terror should be considered political prisoners puts her at odds with international law. Her refusal to acknowledge that terror attacks against civilians are not acceptable regardless of the original grievance raises questions about her own moral standing. To accept her argument would create a world in which people can be killed and maimed in pursuance of whatever political cause their tormentors chose to fight.

Anat Biletzki, a lecture in the Department of Philosophy at TAU currently teaching in Quinnipiac University, is no stranger to controversy. A highly active Marxist, Biletzki has been involved with the International Solidarity Movement that advocates the Palestinian right to return to Israel proper and chaired the B’Tselem, an organization dedicated to monitoring human rights in the territories. While these are legitimate activities, critics accused Biletzki, who specializes in the philosophy of language, of politicizing her academic work and of using sophistry to delegitimize Israel.
In a panel dedicated to commemorating the 9/11 attack, Biletzki clearly crossed the threshold between sophistry and outright misrepresentation and demagoguery. While acknowledging that both 9/11 and suicide bombings in Israel are terror attacks, she proceeds to tell the audience that the United States and Israel have seized upon such events to create a huge “anti-terror industry” and suppress human rights. A number of points in her presentation warrant scrutiny

Matar started by saying that since 1967 a minimum of 650,000 Palestinians have been in Israeli prisons at some stage or other and for varying lengths of time, which equates to every fourth Palestinian.
She said the estimate could even be as high as a million!
Israeli prisoners, she said, are treated as normal criminals while all Palestinians are immediately classed as “security prisoners”, whatever their offence, and that the chances of parole for a “security prisoner” are much lower than that for a Jewish terrorist
She concluded that this Palestinian mass imprisonment, which has excluded a quarter of the population from Palestinian society, has changed the way Palestinian political life is built and amounts to racial discrimination.
She mentioned that many Palestinians are captured at the regular non-violent Friday protests at the “apartheid wall”. Many are held, some are indicted and some serve long prison terms with no parole in contrast to ultra right-wing settlers.

Dr. Snait Gissis, a lecturer at the Cohn Institute at Tel Aviv University has been a member of Machsom Watch since 2002 and signed numerous petitions deploring Israel's treatment of the Palestinians. Nowhere has Gissis bothered to note that the separation fence was erected to prevent hundreds of suicide attacks by Palestinian jihadists that killed and wounded thousands of Israeli civilians. In fact, acting on orders from Iran and Hezbollah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, adopted suicide bombings as a weapon of choice to torpedo the Oslo peace process. By omitting this crucial information, Gissis and her activist cohorts can portray the checkpoints as a wanton cruelty visited on the Palestinians by a brutal and depraved military regime.

What has bothered Israelis, as Matar knows, is that the Palestinian political movement, as she refers to it, has shown, time and again, that its vision of the region does not include a place for Israel, certainly not as a Jewish state. How, one wonders, can Matar view positively and expect Israelis to accept (as freedom fighters ) a political movement that indiscriminately kills citizens of her country and a substantial segment of whose members denies her own people the right to what she seeks for the Palestinians?

we – Palestinian and Israeli social and political forces, representatives of women’s associations and young people from both sides of the Green Line – emphasise the need for a joint struggle, with the goal of liberating the peoples of the region from colonialism and hegemony, particularly that of Zionism, halting the occupation and Israeli military aggression and supporting the just struggle of the Palestinian people for fulfillment of its right for self-determination in accordance with the decisions of the international community.

Zriek is entirely correct to attribute the revival of the Jewish nationalist right to the collapse of the Oslo peace process and the Intifada, not to mention the security threat from the Islamist-dominated Gaza Strip. But it bears emphasizing that Yasser Arafat refused to accept a historically generous offer to settle the conflict because of a last minute insistence on the right to return of Palestinian refugees, a development that neither the Israeli or American negotiators had anticipated. Despairing over the turn of event, two ultra-dovish Labor politicians present at the final round of negations in Sharm-al-Sheikh in January 2001, acknowledged as much, adding that the right to return was a deal breaker.
Given this fact, Zreik’s assertion that Netanyahu has used the “Jewish angle” as a tactical weapon to torpedo negations with the Palestinians is puzzling. His suggestion that Palestinians consider recognizing the Jewish character of Israel in exchange for an Israeli recognition of the right to return is even more perplexing. If, as he seems to believe, the right to return is a key element in the negotiations, then a “forever conflict” is virtually assured.

Like many radical-leftist academics, Elia Lebowitz tries to sustain the "narrative" that blames Israel for the failure to achieve peace by misrepresenting the real problems of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Leibowitz, the son of the famous philosopher Yeshayahu Leibowitz, uses out- of -context quotes and other rhetorical devises to prove his point. His notion that Moshe Dayan wanted to hold on to the territories at all cost is baseless. Dayan was part of the Israeli political and military elite that offered the Arabs to trade the territories for peace in July 1967. As is well known, a month later the Khartoum Conference rejected the proposal with the famous three nos: no negotiation, no recognition no peace.

The symposium at the opening of the exhibition will be devoted to a discussion of the question:
Return—to which state?
A return of Palestinian refugees would inevitably necessitate the establishment of new political relations in the shared Israeli-Palestinian space. What kind of political relations would exist within this space? Would it be a nation-state or a form of shared sovereignty? And what would be the nature of the dynamic between the return of Palestinian refugees and the idea and practice of a Jewish state?
The speakers will present their views, and we will discuss various possibilities for political solutions within the shared Israeli-Palestinian space in anticipation of a return of Palestinian refugees.
The speakers:
Prof. Yehuda Shenhav // teaches in the Department of Sociology at Tel-Aviv University and Research Fellow at the Van Leer Institute in Jerusalem. Served for ten years as editor of the journal Theory and Criticism. Prof. Shenhav will present and discuss the “chronotope of return of refugees” which has been published in Sedek 6, and which is included in the exhibition.
Dr. Raif Zreik // Lecturer at "Carmel" academic center, and managing partner at "Minerva Humanities Center" Tel Aviv.

Either Matar is confused or is trying to confuse the issue. To whom is she referring when she speaks of the political leaders who are also people who just protest, hand out leaflets, organize demonstrations? It is true that many Palestinians engage in legitimate civil protest like handing out leaflets; it is equally true that more than a thousand Israeli citizens have been killed by Palestinian terrorists in the last decade. The Israeli courts did not sentence Barghouti to life because he had handed out leaflets.

the citizens who do not see their own regime as a tyranny because it does not injure them directly need to wake up too. This is certainly true for the citizens of my own country, Israel. A new Middle East will be possible only when the citizens of the Israeli
state will wake up, only when they understand that they are not governed alone by the Israeli regime, that democracy they idolize and hail as the only democracy in the Middle East.

THURSDAY, JULY 21, 2011
Tel Aviv University senior lecturer Anat Matar on Israel's political prisoners
On July 21, 2011, CHUO 89.1 FM Ottawa The Train's Denis Rancourt interviewed senior lecturer of philosophy and political activist Anat Matar by phone from Israel.
We explored "Who Profits" from the Israeli occupation of Palestine, Israel's grotesque system of political prisoners and their judicial treatments, and the origins of the societal pathology of Israel's Zionism.

Israel wanted (and wants) to reach a historic compromise without
facing history, to get the Palestinians to give up their right of return without even recognizing that such a right exists, to reach a radical solution without going back to the roots of the conflict.

Ariella Azoulay - From Palestine to Israel
04-25 November 2011
Mosaic Rooms, London
Azoulay uses the photographs to tell that story. She sees the nakba – the disaster that befell the Palestinians – as the event that made the division between Jews and Arabs possible, while that division, which gradually became fixed, is seen as responsible for the fact that this catastrophe was viewed by the Jews as the unavoidable price of the war for Jewish sovereignty and a disaster only from the Palestinian perspective. Azoulay rejects this view; for her, the nakba is an absolute catastrophe, and she explains how its transformation into “what they see as a disaster” became an essential component in the establishment of the Israeli regime.

Israel portrayed its conflict with the Arabs in its history manuals in black and white terms: « our » side was always the good side – just, benevolent, cultivated, and a victim of the « other » side – who was evil, base, primitive, and a perpetrator of horrible crimes. The Israeli manuals began to change in a significant way only in the late 1990s.
The change of the 1990s occurred mainly because of the new political climate that was a result of the 1993 Oslo accords with the Palestinians. Yet, new historical research also played a crucial role: the books of a generation of « new historians », mainly those of Benny Morris, painted a new, complex picture of the 1948 war, showing that the Palestinians became refugees not only because of the calls of the Arab leaders to temporarily fly the combat zones, but also because of massacres perpetrated by the Israeli army, acts of expulsion, and the chaotic situation of the war, that made their homes unsafe. Moreover, unlike other cases in which refugees were allowed to return to their homes after a war, the Palestinians were not allowed to do so, and remained on the other side of the newly created border, longing for their lands.

III On the Verge of Humanitarian Catastrophe
I have distinguished above three ways in which discursive catastrophization may be involved in the actual production of catastrophes: legitimization, mitigation, and suspension. The third way, I’ve said, is characteristic of some contemporary zones of emergency, of which the Israeli rule in the Occupied Palestinian Territories since the Second Intifada may serve as a clear example. Let me look briefly at this case and draw from it some general conclusions.
The Israeli government responded to the Palestinian uprising with excessive violence, generous and indiscriminate use of live ammunition and extensive destruction of houses, land and property. It was not physical violence, however, but spatial disintegration and fragmentation that emerged as the main technology of domination and control which Israel used in order to contain and suppress the Palestinian resistance and stop a stream of suicide attacks in Israeli cities west of the Green line. The effect of the new regime of movement on the Palestinian population was enormous. The situation has further deteriorated when Israel responded aggressively to a terrorist attack (in Hotel Park in Netanya on Passover eve 2002), re-conquered several Palestinian towns, crushed the security apparatuses of the Palestinian Authority and dismantled many other institutions of the Palestinian government (Operation Defense Shield). The IDF resumed the massive demolition of Palestinian houses (in order to create “clean” areas and to punish families of suspects in terrorist activity) and thousands of Palestinians have become homeless. Soon there appeared the first reports that catastrophized the conditions in the OPT. They tried to ring the alarm bells, using rhetoric of urgency that has not been used before. First came the Bertini report that insisted on the fact that “the growing humanitarian crisis” is “man made” and listed several “indicators” for the crisis: increase in malnutrition; deteriorating health; and exhaustion of coping mechanisms. The report cited a survey made by scholars from Johns Hopkins University that found “substantial increase in the number of malnourished children over the past two years, with 22.5 percent of children under five suffering from acute (9.3 percent) or chronic (13.2 percent) malnutrition,” with much higher rates in Gaza than in the West Bank.

I work with two activist groups: "Solidarity against the fascism" and "Anarchist against the wall", Many of the people in this two action groups, in particular the anarchists are queers. Some people from the anarchist started recently to distribute the BDS campaign call "Rfu$e" (you can find it on facebook) and I take part on it.

Omar Barghouti
who will discuss his new book
BDS: Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions
The Global Struggle for Palestinian Rights
On Thursday July 28 at 6:30 pm
Educational Bookshop - Jerusalem
Tel: 02-6283704
OMAR BARGHOUTI is an independent Palestinian commentator and human rights activist. He is a founding member of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) and the Palestinian Civil Society Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel.

Is it not better that we fight against the occupation[?]
We claim that the illusion that the end of the occupation will bring with it a separation from the Palestinians is the root of all evil. What lies behind the various “disengagement plans”, especially the greedy “separation wall'...because the oppressor will be free only when the oppressed will be free...Solutions based upon separation (always unilateral), are bound to fail (see under: Gaza.)
...Lebanon and Gaza, [our] wars of choice

Take a look at how we work on the ground, so to speak; look at how we do human rights, for example, in Israel-Palestine. When Rabbi Arik Ascherman, the leader of Rabbis for Human Rights in Israel, squats in the mud trying to stop soldiers who have come to set a blockade around a village or fights settlers who have come to uproot olive trees (as he has done so often, in villages like Yanoun and Jamain and Biddu, in the last decade) along with me (from B’Tselem — the Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories), or a group of secular kids from Anarchists Against the Wall, or people from the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions

The full scope of who might fall under this new law’s purview is unclear because of its brief, murky text. But Anat Matar is sure she is one of those who will.
A senior lecturer at Tel Aviv University’s department of philosophy, Matar is a steering committee member of Who Profits? an Israeli group that publishes a list of companies doing business in the settlements. She is an outspoken supporter of the Palestinian call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions — an international movement calling for a boycott of Israel — and has written op-eds promoting it.
“Of course I am threatened” by the law, Matar said. “The question is, what am I going to do?”
Matar recently wrote an article in Mafte’akh, a TAU academic journal of political thought, exploring academic freedom of speech and the BDS movement. She doesn’t think her own university would ever sue her for her support of an international boycott of Israeli academia; the previous rector has had “difficult” discussions with her, she says, but she has never been kicked out of the university. Perhaps the Ariel University Center of Samaria, located in a West Bank settlement, would consider suing her, she speculated.
Matar is less sure of whether her university will be liable for what she wrote in Mafte’akh. Several calls to TAU’s press office on this question were not returned.

Sari Bashi, Executive Director of Gisha, says it is infuriating that residents of Gaza are being deliberately reduced to recipients of humanitarian aid. "The problem in Gaza is not a shortage of food but rather a violation of the right to productive, dignified work. There is just one solution that will respect the rights of Gaza residents to freedom of movement and livelihood while protecting Israel's legitimate security interests: Israel must lift the ban on construction materials, exit of goods and travel between Gaza and the West Bank".

Outlawing boycotts against Israel and similar measures of repression will not turn the tide. These are rightfully perceived as pathetic and desperate attempts at silencing legitimate dissent. The intensifying pressure of the international community should support the resolve of Israeli and international civil society to continue resisting occupation policies. It should eventually force Israel to come to its senses.

Wexler’s initial review of the existing literature on the topic of incitement led him to Daniel Bar Tal, a professor of child development and education at Tel Aviv University, and to Sami Adwan, a professor of education at Bethlehem University. Wexler asked them be his head researchers, earning a degree of criticism from right-wing Israelis, who saw Bar Tal as a leftist, and from militant Palestinians, who saw Adwan as a collaborator. Wexler also created an international Scientific Advisory Panel of 22 academics who had studied textbooks, most in the context of the Middle East.
Bar Tal and Adwan have acquired 141 Palestinian books and 486 Israeli textbooks, from grades one through 12, for analysis.

It is only through Shlomo Sand’s careful scholarship that I have come to understand what the real story is. Sand documents that Judaism was in fact an early militant religion whose beliefs were spread through proselytisation and conquest. For example, in the eighth and ninth centuries there occurred the conversion of the Khazar kingdom in the north Caucuses and this explains the origins of the many millions of Jews who have lived in such regions no constituting modern-day Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. Similarly, Judaism spread through conquest and conversion along the Mediterranean coast of North Africa and this explain the origin of the Berber Jews of Morocco. Of course, over time, many of the peoples who had adopted the Jewish faith were subsequently conquered by, and/or converted to, Christianity, and then later many of these Christians and many remaining Jews were in turn conquered by, and/or converted to, Islam.
Hence I have come to realise that I am not in fact descended from Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Rather, my ancestors were Jewish converts and that, as a descendent of Ashkenazi Jews, I am not Semitic. Indeed, if one is looking for the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, then the place to look is in Gaza and other areas of Palestine where the descendants of the original population of this region continue to live. There is a dreadful and cruel irony that the European Ashkenazi Jews, who promoted Zionism, usurped this heritage for themselves and have managed to evict the real descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Joseph.

In the court's judgement, Gisha is referred to, in quotations, as a "human rights" organization. Attorney Nomi Heger wrote that this judgement "hints at a sense of skepticism that Gisha and other similar organizations are indeed primarily concerned with protecting human rights."
Furthermore, the judgement by Justice Bitan invents a new category of "professional petitioners." Gisha has voiced concerns, saying that this sets "a dangerous precedent that potentially shuts the doors of the court to organizations that engage in legal advocacy on behalf of disenfranchised populations."
Since the 1967 Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Israel has restricted the movement of 3.4 million Palestinians through a complex system of rules and sanctions.
According to Gisha, these restrictions "violate the fundamental right of Palestinians to freedom of movement," as well as other basic rights, such as the right to freedom of religion.

The Arabs of 1948 are the ultimate impediment to this regime inasmuch as they serve as a constant reminder of the skeleton it keeps in the closet: the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948–the expulsion, the expropriation of land, the obliteration of towns and villages, and the inaccuracy of the historiographic narrative aimed at justifying all these actions. The fact that the cleansing of the Jewish sovereign territory–achieved by expelling Palestinians, by frightening them, and by forcing them to flee–remains incomplete leaves the ongoing presence of Palestinians in Israel as profound testimony to the undemocratic nature of Israeli
sovereignty.

Wednesday 17 August
3:30pm - 4:30pm
ScottishPower Studio Theatre
An academic at Tel Aviv University, Shlomo Sand describes himself as a 'post-Zionist'. His recent book, The Invention of the Jewish People sparked a furious worldwide controversy with his claim that Jewish people are not a genetically defined race. Sand defends his position by discussing the work of the 19th century historian Ernest Renan, using Renan's lectures to argue that Israel needs to reform itself to become a state of all its citizens – Jews and Arabs.

The weekly peaceful demonstration in Beit-Ummar set off as almost every week in the last few weeks outside the village on the walkway up to the agriculture zone near the settlement Carmei-Zur.In the march took part approx 15 Palestinians, few internationals and 10 Israelis (from Tel-Aviv, Jerusalem and Haifa), holding nations flags and signs. At the middle of the path, about 150 meters walking the IOF soldiers waited and tried to stop the march, the protesters terned into the grove and then were stopped by the soldiers between the trees. The soldiers were aggressive, allow the protesters to say a few words but not to move forward, and when some people tried to do so they stopped them violently. After that the protesters worked symbolically for 10 minuets deforestation stones from the agriculture area. After that we felt our message delivered and we left the area.

On May 7, 2011, Israeli and Palestinian activists met in Hebron for a conference to launch a common struggle against the occupation. The conference was organized by the Alternative Information Center (AIC) and the Israeli-Palestinian organization Tarabut-Hithabrut; the some 300 activists declared themselves to be partners in the “struggle for a free and democratic Middle East, free of all forms of hegemony and colonialism, especially Zionism.” The conference was billed as a “historical event,” in the sense that it included a number of unstructured dialogues among groups working on various aspects of “occupation and dispossession.”
One of the panels was devoted to the political situation in the territories in the wake of the Fatah –Hamas agreement and the possibility that the United Nations would recognize a Palestinian state in September. Dr. Gerardo Leibner, professor of Latin American studies at Tel Aviv University and an activist in Tarabut, offered a number of grim scenarios that could follow Palestinian independence. First, should Israel be forced to withdraw from most of the West Bank, the right wing coalition could act against the Palestinian citizens of Israel [Israeli Arabs].
Another panel offered a discussion on popular efforts to oppose the Israeli occupation. Gadi Algazi, professor of history at Tel Aviv University and a member of the coordinating committee of Tarabut, surveyed the process of colonial dispossession and the steps taken by Palestinians to undermine them. Algazi mentioned two cases in which his group was involved- helping the people of Susya to regain their lands lost 2001 and the Bedouins of al Arakib in the Negev who tried to regain their land. Algazi noted that, as part of the struggle, his organization tried to undermine the National Israel Fund’s forestation project on the lands.

In the background are agreements on archaeology in the 1993 Oslo Accords and its annexes. Oslo was to be temporary, and administration in West Bank areas where Israel had control was to be slowly turned over to the Palestinians. But most of the agreements were never implemented, as talks failed.
When these agreements were made, nobody saw that there would be an extended period of occupation,” said archaeologist Raphael Greenberg of Tel Aviv University. “Oslo was flawed because it listed sites of national interest to Israel and there is no standing for special interests under international law. Israel considers itself right to claim sites in Palestinian territory, but the same right is not extended to Palestinians: they can’t claim heritage sites in Israel. Both sides have important interests in their own history, heritage and identity on both sides of the border, and these issues are not covered by international laws and conventions. They will have to be framed beyond the letter of the law.”

On the occasion of the international day against torture
The Israeli Committee for the Palestinian Prisoners / The Coalition of Women for Peace / The Public Committee against Torture in Israel / Hamoked – Center for the Defence of the Individual / Physicians for Human Rights / Adalah / Machsomwatch Observers in Military Courts
are holding a book launch event upon the publication of
Threat: The Palestinian Political Prisoners in Israel
Edited by Abeer Baker and Anat Matar
On Tuesday, 21st June, 18:30-21:30, at the Tel Aviv Cinematheque
The evening will open with a screening of HUNGER – a film about the struggle of political prisoners in Northern-Ireland, followed by a discussion on
CRIMINALIZING THE POLITICAL STRUGGLE
with
Dr. Anat Matar, Adv. Abeer Baker, Mr. Abdallah Abu-Rahma (Bil’in), Dr. Omar Said, Adv. Gabi Lasky, Adv. Lea Tsemel

Tel Aviv University's Ben-Amos agrees that the fallen should be commemorated. "But the matter must not be presented as the basis for our identity, among other reasons because getting stuck in the past leads to self-perception as an eternal victim," he says. "We forget that since 1967, IDF soldiers are no longer victims, but rather partners in turning another people into victims."
The involvement of the IDF's chief education officer shows "the deepening militarization of education, which should remain a civilian matter," he says, adding that the IDF's participation "allows the IDF not only to professionally prepare young people for army service, but to interfere in the students' values and perceptions."

The new findings prove that the company was given a license for excavating minerals in 2004 from the Israeli Civil Administration, which is the representative of the Israeli government in the Occupied West Bank, and that the excavation site on the occupied shores of the Northern Dead Sea is currently active. By making use of mud that is excavated in the occupied area the company is violating international humanitarian law (the laws of occupation), which prohibits the plundering of natural resources from the occupied territory.
By making use of mud that is excavated in the occupied area the company is violating international humanitarian law (the laws of occupation), which prohibits the plundering of natural resources from the occupied territory. Merav Amir, Coordinator of Who Profits, said, “Ahava can no longer continue misleading consumers about where they get the mud used in their products. This mud is from the Occupied West Bank and is stolen from the Palestinian people.”

First published as Matai ve'ekh humtza ha'am hayehud ? [When and How Was the Jewish People Invented?], Sand's iconoclastic masterpiece has topped the Israeli bestsellers list and won France's covered Aujourd'hui Award. Sand has unraveled the fanciful fabrications of the rabbis, the self-styled architects of Jewish identity and explicated how they were charlatans and pranks with no leg to stand on.
The political implications of Sand's nonconformist work are tremendous and groundbreaking. Contemporary Jewry have virtually nothing to do with the ancient Judeans. Sand declares the Old Testament to be "Mythistory". The vast majority of modern-day Jewry are descendants of the proselytized peoples of the medieval empires of the Kagans and the Khazars who moved progressively westwards into the Slavic lands of Eastern Europe and Russia.

Adi Ophir: The legal banning of public commemoration of the Nakba is a welcome contribution to the critique of the dominant Israeli discourse. Through its distorted conceptual grid and the sheer lies it helped to spread, this discourse has long prevented the appearance of the Nakba as part of the history of the Israeli State. While Zokhrot – the NGO dedicated to commemorate the Nakba among Israeli Jews – has succeeded to reach one or two dozens of thousand people during its ten years activity, the banning has made almost every Israeli aware of something called the Nakba. The prohibition – like every prohibition – might make the prohibited object desirable and drive more Jews and Palestinian to learn more about that which they cannot commemorate. Another advantage of this banning is the fact that it exposes the racist tendencies of the current Israeli government and the Jewish majority which it represents.
Ariella Azoulay: One of the most important and distinctive features of the Israeli regime, which is often ignored, is the way and intensity of the mobilization of Jewish citizens to take part in its perpetuation, while misrecognizing the nature of the regime and the meaning of their actions. The Israeli regime is not exceptional in its colonial, oppressive, and discriminatory practices, but it is quite unique in this respect. Formally, the Nakba law is not about concealing the Israeli-Palestinian past but about testing the Palestinian loyalty to the Jewish State. Its subtext is not the fear of exposing Jews to the true reality of the occupation but the wish to frighten Jews by exposing the allegedly true nature of the Palestinian as basically traitors. But the effect of this is that now everyone knows that the terrible thing that Palestinians have to hide is that they have been victims of the Israeli State.

Project coordinator Merav Amir lauded the decision of the German government, saying “I want to congratulate the German government for making such a clear and bold statement about the illegality of this train route under international law.
“It’s encouraging to see a government abide by their own treaties and adhere to international law, and we call on other European governments to follow suit in making sure that companies in their countries abide by international law.”
Amir noted that American and European companies are often involved in "illegal" construction projects on Palestinian territories: “There is a discrepancy between what EU government's say and what actually happens,” she said.
“Governments issue statements about the illegality of Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories, but when you see what the EU commercial sector actually does, usually it violates those very declarations, encouraging Israeli control over occupied territory.”

“Kratsman’s photographs are unique,” says visual culture writer Ariella Azoulay. His “decisions are torn between the professional duty to photograph in any circumstance and the civil duty to not let his gaze obediently follow the agendas of media and political discourse. He always reminds the spectator that the occupation of Palestinian Territories is the background story for all events taking place there.”

Prof. Gadi Algazi: Surely. Let’s go back then, let’s go nearer home at least for us to Israel itself, where do you think the recent upheavals, short that they are not really revolutions, where do you think they place Israel who has claimed for so long to be the only democracy in the Middle East?
Prof. Noam Chomsky: Well, first of all, the claim is a little weak. Israel claims to be a democratic Jewish state. Well, that’s a contradiction. It wouldn’t mean much if the commitment to being a Jewish state was purely symbolic, like having a day of rest on Saturday, but it’s not. If you look at Israeli laws, administrative regulations, and so on, they have made a very sharp distinction between the Jewish majority and the non-Jewish minority. Up until the year 2000, most of the land of the country, over 90 percent, was essentially in the hands of an organization which is committed by its contract with the State of Israel for people of the Jewish race, religion, and origin. In fact, non-Jewish citizens were kept off the land. Well, in the year 2000, the Supreme Court technically revised that, and now there is Knesset legislation trying to undermine the court decision. Actually, what’s happening is that while there is a democratic uprising in the Arab world, which should be very welcome if not to Israel, it is going in the opposite direction in Israel.

It is good to know that on top of the imprisonment sentences applied to Palestinian "instigators", the Israeli State Terrorism Forces apply potentially deadly violence (remember Aqel Srour!) on an ad-hoc basis to punish activists for the "crime" of "instigating" people to demonstrate. Shortly after Samir was evacuated a few soldiers crossed the fence, but were immediately order to retreat without shooting (posing for the press?). The Shabab enjoyed the opportunity granted by the Isreali Nonsense Forces to escort the withdrawal with stones.

The Alternative Information Center (AIC), together with the Palestinian social movement in Hebron and Tarabut-Hithabrut social movement from Israel, is honoured to invite you to the conference
A Joint Struggle for an End to the Occupation and Racism is the first joint Palestinian-Israeli public conference in the city of Hebron since before the First Intifada. The political and historical importance of initiating such a conference in the city of Hebron, a microcosm of both the Israeli occupation, with its settlements, the Separation Wall, land confiscation and military presence, and the only active popular social movement in a West Bank urban area, cannot be overstated.
Trends of Ruling Forces in Israel and Possible Alternatives, Political activist from Tarabut Dr. Gerardo Liebner
Joint Struggles: From South Hebron Hills to Al Araqib, Professor Gadi Algazi

Zochrot calls on you, peace and human rights advocates, to participate in the largest event held each year to commemorate the Nakba in Israel. For the past fourteen years, the Association in Defense of the Rights of Internally Displaced Palestinians has organized a procession to commemorate the Nakba on Israel’s Independence Day, and in recent years a growing number of Jews have joined. The Nakba Law is a direct response to this activity. It aims to intimidate and prevent us from dealing with the Nakba: Learning about and acknowledging our responsibility, in order to achieve reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians.
Speakers:
Attorney Emily Schaeffer (Michael Sfard Law Office); Prof. Uri Hadar (Tel Aviv University); Amaya Galili (Education Project Coordinator, Zochrot)

We, too, live in a regime that in reality—despite its pretensions to being “enlightened” and “democratic”—does not represent large sections of its actual population in the Occupied Territories and inside of the Green Line border(s). This regime tramples the economic and social rights of most of its citizens, is in an ongoing process of minimizing democratic liberties, and constructs racist barriers against Arab-Jews, the Arab people, and Arabic culture. ...
Specifically, we must be in dialog and solidarity with struggles of the Palestinians citizens of Israel who are fighting for equal political and economic rights and for the termination of racist laws, and the struggle of the Palestinian people living under Israeli military occupation in the West Bank and in Gaza in their demand to end the occupation and to gain Palestinian national independence.

Letter to Marrickville Council from concerned citizens of Israel urging you to stand firm in your support of BDS
We are Israeli citizens who witness first-hand the brutality of ourgovernment’s policies towards the Palestinian people. We stand firm in our support of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) initiatives against Israel until it meets its obligation to recognize the Palestinian people’s inalienable right to self-determination, and fully complies with the precepts of international law.
We reject the notion promoted by demagogues, that the 2005 BDS call from Palestine, and the BDS campaigns the world over which it has inspired, are rooted in anti-Jewish sentiment. On the contrary, BDS is an anti-racist movement against the daily, brutal occupation of Palestine and the virulently racist policies towards Israel’s Palestinian citizens.

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SAY NO TO AHAVA FESTIVAL!
During Passover the AHAVA Festival is due on the shores of the Dead Sea. The festival will take place at Mitzpe Shalem, a settlement located in the Palestinian part of the Dead Sea. The festival sponsor is the AHAVA company whose factory is also located at the same settlement of Mitzpe Shalem.
The music lovers who intend to go to the festival should know that they would be taking part in an event whose aim to legitimize the settlement enterprise. Mitzpe Shalem was established in a territory occupied since 1967. It is as much a West Bank settlement as Ariel, Yitzhar or Kiryat Arba!
...Participation in this festival is not a culturally neutral activity. It would be full-fledged political act, an act giving legitimizing and approving the occupation.

On March 30, 2011, Tel Aviv University Prof. Gadi Algazi helped to organize a Land Day demonstration in the unrecognized Bedouin village of Al Arakib. According to facebook, Algazi was one of the principle organizers of this rally, and this could be demonstrated by the fact that one of the speakers at the Land Day event publicly thanked Algazi for his contributions.

This testimony was made public by the Israeli group Breaking the Silence in July 2009, a few months after Israel’s latest attack on Gaza, known as Operation Cast Lead. It was included in a compilation of soldiers’ testimonies released by this group of veterans in an attempt “to bring into question the credibility of the official IDF versions” of the war.2 This video testimony – one of several accompanying a booklet in which the bulk of the taped testimonies are reproduced – partakes in a particular economy of witnessing. The vast majority of the witnesses whose voices Breaking the Silence works to bring to the public discourse remain anonymous. In the group’s publication, their testimonies are broken down into thematic fragments, so that often several testimonies, though not explicitly related to one another, have actually been produced by one sole eyewitness. The witnesses, comprising both active duty and reserve soldiers, rarely voice any opposition to Israel’s actions during the attack on the Gaza strip or to the occupation at large.

A new study, which will be published in the forthcoming issue of Israel Studies in Language and Society under the title "Talking Peace - Making War," shows that the Torah leaflets distributed by the thousands in synagogues encourage racism, xenophobia and incitement to violence.
The brochures enable Jewish religious fanatics to circumvent the formal channels of newspapers, radio and television and transmit their messages packaged as religious sermons. Daniel Bar-Tal, Hadas Zoran and Hila Cohen of Tel Aviv University and Tamir Magal of Haifa University have analyzed 91 leaflets (most of which receive government funding) distributed by seven key religious Zionist organizations during the course of three months, beginning the month before Operation Cast Lead and ending after the completion of the operation.
The researchers found that the most outstanding common denominator in the leaflets is the exclusive right of the Jewish people and the denial of the right of the Palestinian people to the Land of Israel.

This book provides an imperative illustration of how the Israeli Occupation has imprisoned the political voices of the Palestinian people. Featuring a spectrum of authors with a range of expertise, this volume offers readers a refreshing insight into and documentation of Israel’s revocation of Palestinians’ right to justice. For many years, the judicial process has been turned against Palestinians, and this comprehensive analysis is essential to understand how Israel has achieved that, and how to overcome this injustice.

finally: you do say that the only real solution now is a secular democratic state, a one state, recognizing realities. Is that a wish, or is that something you think is eventually going to have to happen?
Yoav Peled: I think it eventually will have to happen, or else the situation will be very unpleasant. I don’t think this is around the corner or anytime soon. But the fact that Egypt might now become democratic and if the same thing happens in Jordan, the pressure on Israel will increase, then gradually the realization will come that they have to solve the issue with the Palestinians. They can no longer keep three and a half million Palestinians as subjects with no rights, and by then it will be clear that the only way is to simply give them rights because there is no possibility of partition. So I think this could happen, but it’s really in the long term, not something that’s going to happen anytime soon.

Today in the Middle East. This ethnocentric positions make Israel a real Ghetto in the face of the Arab world, a real ghetto. I am becoming pessimist. If you follow the positions of all the leadership in Israel face of wave of democratization in the Middle East They are afraid of it, against the wave of democratization of the Middle East. I don't know how it will finish.
In Israel there is a position against the democratization of the Middle East not only against Islamic democracy, also liberal democracy in Egypt, in Jordan do be very nice in the face of Israel at least for one reason, Israel is occupying another people another population for 43 years without giving any human rights political rights and social rights to this people.

He said there had never been an exile of the Jews under the Romans and so, as there was no exile, there could never be a return.
But all Israeli school textbooks spoke of this mythical “exile” he said.
He claimed the Jews were merely a religious phenomenon and as they came from all over the world, and so had no connection with each other, they could not be described as “a people”. Sand is an Israeli Jewish atheist.
Today’s Jews, he said, are just descendants of converts from African tribes i.e. the Khazars and the Berbers. These tribes had simply converted en masse to Judaism.
Zionists had only recently taken Jewish myths and cultured them into a nationalist ideology.
But Jews had never wanted to originally go to Palestine. Only after 1924, when America closed the gates, and eventually the British too, did they finally set sail for Palestine.

On February 11, 2011, Dr. Kreitner spoke in favor of commercial boycott. Kreitner spoke at an event sponsored by the Human Rights Program at Harvard Law School, the International Legal Studies at Harvard Law School, the Middle East Law Students Association at Harvard, the Harvard Islamic Society, and the Palestine Solidarity Committee at Harvard College. The event was entitled, “boycotting the Israeli occupation?” Kreitner spoke in favor of a commercial boycott and
also glibly used the term "facism" at least once to describe Israel.

A Jewish community leader and prominent physician has written to the rector and president of Tel Aviv University, calling for the school to take a stand after two of its lecturers called for support of a boycott of Israel in a British newspaper last week.
Prof. Stuart Stanton, president of the British Society of Urogynecology and chairman of Hadassah UK, wrote to TAU rector Prof. Aron Shai and president Prof. Yossi Klafter after Prof. Rachel Giora and Dr. Anat Matar, along with 10 other Israeli activists, wrote a letter that was published in the Guardian, calling for British author Ian McEwan to turn down the Jerusalem Prize.

We are a group of Israeli citizens who are deeply concerned about our government's policies of apartheid and occupation, and the European Union's complicity in these policies. We would like to take this opportunity to congratulate Poland for assuming the EU Presidency in July 2011. It has been brought to our attention that the first joint Polish-Israeli cabinet session is due in Jerusalem on the 24th of February. We are therefore writing to you to ask that you resume your responsibility to uphold basic principles of international law and human rights in Israel/Palestine .
Israel's violations of human rights, in the occupied Palestinian territories, as well as inside Israel, include violations of : the Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid (1976); The Fourth Geneva Convention (1949) Art 49 regarding transfer of an occupying powers' civilian population into the territory it occupies

Sand’s thesis on the origins of the Jewish people and the narrativization of nationalism in Israel to obscure and mystify the real history of the Middle East and its people started an international debate: it was branded “baseless” by its critics and hailed as unequivocal evidence for a one-state solution for Israel and Palestine by its champions. Sand, who describes himself as ‘post-Zionist’, believes that the state of Israel needs to reform itself to become the state of all its citizens, both Jew and Arab, directly challenging the proposed amendment to the Law of Citizenship requiring all non-Jews to pledge loyalty to "the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.”
Sand is defiant in the face of Netanyahu’s accusation that "there are many today who tried to blur not only the unique connection of the Jewish people to its homeland, but also the connection of the Jewish people to its state." He writes for Ha'aretz that “Benjamin Netanyahu is unsure of his identity: His insecurity is behind his pointless demand for Palestinian recognition of Israel as uniquely Jewish.”

We are members of BOYCOTT! – a group of Jews and Palestinians, citizens and residents of Israel, who are struggling to end the Israeli occupation and oppression of the Palestinians. We are writing to reassure you that here, in Israel, your attempts to bring about a change in the Middle East will not fall on deaf ears. There is increasing evidence showing that the boycott movement, inspired by the Palestinian call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel may eventually affect Israel’s policies. Indeed the loss of Israel’s legitimacy, caused by the state’s war crimes and violation of international law, is affecting the Israeli public, its opinion shapers, as well as policy makers.

As Israeli citizens who support the boycott, divestment and sanctions call on Israel, we believe that if Ian McEwan accepts the Jerusalem prize next month in Jerusalem, it will make him a collaborator with Israel's worst human rights offenders and its "business as usual" policy. The Jerusalem prize is awarded by the Israeli establishment, which is keen on branding Israel in general, and Jerusalem in particular, as beacons of enlightenment and democracy. In reality, Ian McEwan will be playing into the hands of and shaking hands with cynical politicians who are trying to whitewash their systematic human rights violations. Specifically, he will be legitimising the actions of Jerusalem's racist mayor, Nir Barkat

On December 28, 2010, there was a lecture sponsored by Zochrot entitled “Teaching the other’s narrative: Successes and obstacles-----from planning to implementation.” Zochrot is “a group of Israeli citizens working to raise awareness of the Nakba, the Palestinian catastrophe of 1948.” Zochrot “works to make the history of the Nakba accessible to the Israeli public so as to engage Jews and Palestinians in an open recounting of our painful history.” Zochrot believes that “acknowledging the past is the first step in taking responsibility for its consequences.” Thus, Zochrot supports a “Palestinian right of return” and the granting of equal citizenship rights to the returning Palestinians.
According to the event’s website, “Teaching the other’s narrative” is the name of “a history textbook containing historical narratives of Palestinians and Israelis, published by PRIME (The Peace Research Institute in the Middle East) in 2009. It addresses nine events in twentieth century history, including the Balfour Declaration and the first half of the twentieth century, the 1948 war, the 1967 war, the First Intifada, the 1990s, and more.” The project was founded and jointly directed by Dr. Sami Adwan of Bethlehem University and the now diseased Dr. Dan Bar-On of Ben-Gurion University, who were in turn assisted by Dr. Adnan Massallam of Bethlehem University and Dr. Eyal Naveh of Tel Aviv University.

Dear Professor Gross,
We are in possession of your rather extraordinary response (dated Jan 6th) to our reply (dated Dec 29, see below) to your demand for a public apology (dated Dec 22). (We have refrained from publishing the contents of your demand at your express request)
Let us say at the outset that we find your allegation that "I think your actions… is [sic] McCarthyst [sic] and undermines democracy" quite astonishing – indeed preposterous.
McCarthyism!!?? Indeed because we propagate views that you espouse and/or endorse – generally without any comment on our part - to audiences who otherwise would be unexposed to them? Does that really undermine democracy!!?? Because we operate – usually without any interpretative remarks on our part - to inform sectors of the public of the manner in which you (and your likeminded colleagues) portray Israel, its policies and perspectives, to sectors who otherwise would be totally unaware of the activities you undertake?

Tel Aviv University hosts a conference on Tuesday January 18, 2011, "as a result of the destruction of Al-Arakib village in the Negev".
Participants: Shaikh Siah Al Tori - Head of the village Al Arakib, Hadash party Secretary - Aiman Udah, Prof' Gadi Algazi of Hithabrut-Tarabut movement, lawyer Rawia Abu-Rabia of the Association for Human Rights. Chair: Prof' Avner Ben Amos, of the Negev Forum for Coexistence.

The Democratic Camp, including political parties, public organizations and grassroots movements, is organizing to fight back against the governmental attack on Israeli democracy, orchestrated by Foreign Minister Lieberman.
The organizers act out of a feeling that this country stands at a critical crossroads. In the coming months it will be decided whether Israel will be a democracy, or will become a pariah, illegitimate state, slipping further and further down the slope towards outright Fascism, where the Lieberman – Netanyahu - Barak government is heading.

Ahlul Bayt News Agency) - Israel has been instrumentalizing the issue of Iran threat ideologically to divert attention from its growing problems, said renowned Israeli historian and sociologist Moshe Zuckermann.
Addressing an international conference of radical leftist parties in Berlin, Zuckermann said that the Zionist regime has been using the alleged Iranian 'threat' as a 'diversion policy' to cover up its own racist policies and its failure to seal a peace agreement with the Palestinian side.

In his book "How the Jewish people was invented" Shlomo Sand claims that there is no Jewish people, just a Jewish religion. He rejects most of the stories of national-identity formation in the Bible, including the exodus from Egypt. He thinks it's all fiction and myth that served as an excuse for the establishment of the State of Israel. According to Sand, the Zionist need to devise for them a shared ethnicity and historical continuity produced a long series of inventions and fictions. Some were concocted in the minds of those who conceived the Zionist movement, while others were offered as the findings of genetic studies conducted in Israel. In his opinion present-day Jews are not descendants of the Jews who lived in Judea 1900 years ago, but descended form later-day converts to Judaism. As such they are just a group with the same religion and had no legitimate right to establish their nation-state in Mandatory Palestine.
But Sand ignores the genetic research which clearly shows that, even though there is no "Jewish DNA," there is definite biological-genetic evidence that the Jews are one people. Most of those studies were done abroad, in very reputable academic laboratories and published in prestigious peer review journals.

Clyne: "besides the fact that Tel-Aviv University is already entangled with the army, the arms industry, and all the “Arab Specialists”– it choose to further strengthen its ties with the movement for justifying the colonialization industry in its backyard; and besides that its xenophobia studies institution is a leading partner in the industry of the mystification of anti-semitism (and of course places all criticism of Israel under this banner); this is also a real case of academic disgrace."

Inter-group equality, in a country where societies live, by
and large, apart from each other, requires reliable mechanisms that can safeguard against the tendency of decision-makers from majority groups to discriminate on a group-biased basis. The Israeli Court has offered protection for minority
group members in specific, proven cases of discrimination.
However, in general, the Court has failed to develop effective
procedural mechanisms, such as by ensuring representation
and, in particular, elected minority representation.
Had the Court developed such effective, procedural
mechanisms, it could have offered more systematic protection
against inter-group discrimination. In fact, the Court never
hinted that such mechanisms were required, or even desired

The Israeli author, Shlomo Sand, 63, was in Morocco last week to present his book, published September 3, by Fayard, "How the Jewish people was invented."
In this occasion, this professor of history at the University of Tel Aviv has made two presentations to the Foundation Ibn Abd El Aziz and Carrefour books.
The book is a true best-seller in Israel, where he has sold several million copies. It has also been a big success in Europe. The few copies ordered by the Carrefour books have sold like hotcakes and the library had to order again.
In his book Sand calls into question the historical legitimacy of the "Jewish Israelian Nation, but calls on Arab nations to recognize Israel as a condition for progress ...

The adherence to a 2-State Solution condemns Palestinians with Israeli citizenship to live as second class citizens in their historic country, in a racist state in which they are not allowed the same rights as Jewish citizens. Furthermore, the continuance of a Zionist state on the land of the Palestinian refugees denies these refugees the internationally recognized right to return.
The Two-State Solution cannot lead to anything other than the consolidation and cementation of inequality. The model of two states separated according to ethnicity or religion means ethnic separation or fundamental inequality inside this state, as we experience in Israel today. The contributions of Ilan Pappé and the Palestinian speakers showed conclusively that the hitherto so-called “peace process” and negotiations have been merely a smoke screen behind which Israel continues to steal land and disenfranchise the Palestinian population.

The essential concepts of democracy and self-determination demand that the residents of the Occupied Territories be the ones to decide their own future. The future of the Golan Heights should be decided by its residents who found themselves under Israeli rule after 1967: the same principle should apply to East Jerusalem and to the Occupied Territories in general.
However, in Israel an odd idea has taken root: that the decision whether the residents of territories occupied by Israel, and who live under Israeli rule against their will, should continue to live under Israeli occupation should be made by the residents of the occupying State – rather than by the residents of the territories themselves – and that this is to be done in the name of democracy.
Considering the general Israeli denial of the rights of the Arab population and specifically the Palestinians, this may not be a very big surprise.

Anti-Semitism is, given its devastating consequences in the recent past, certainly the most despicable manifestations of racist ideology. His ban is a social necessity.
Problematic and counterproductive it is, however, if the fight against anti-Semitism is abused for political and anti-Semitism itself for - ideology - stabilizing rule. It has long been customary policy of force with the charge of anti-Semitism to silence critics of Israel to do and debate necessary to suppress reasonably controlled. Anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism, criticism of Israel - everything is thrown into a pot and an "anti-Semitism" overcooked mush - for any demagogic use.
Moshe Zuckermann analyzed these - of democratic politics most dangerous - development. In his view) has the improper use of anti-Semitism accusations to a "terrible epidemic"

About 30 Israelis and 15 internationals joined the Palestinian demonstration in Bil'in against the fence and occupation that steals the locals' lands and liberty. The demonstrators marched to the gate, opened it, engaged in a brief verbal exchange with the soldiers, were confronted with an arbitrary and unauthorized closed military zone declaration, and gassed away - all in a space of just a couple of minutes. Most demonstrators backed away, but the shabab came forward retaliated with stones. The clashes went on for a while, but when the shabab were about to call it a day, the soldiers decided they want more, so they crossed the fence and initiated another round of gas-oppression and stone-resistance.

Confrontations with security forces are an unavoidable aspect of on the ground activism for justice in Israel-Palestine. Can we learn from our experience in order to act optimally in such situations?
Come to a Tarabut facilitated panel discussion.
Wednesday December 1, 7:30-10:30 PM at the Alternative Information Center, 4 Shlomzion St. 2nd Floor.
Panelists:
- Ezra Nawi, Ta'ayush activist focusing on the South Hebron hills.
- Avihai Stollar, Shovrim Shtika (Breaking the Silence) activist.
- Prof. Gadi Algazi, Tarabut activist currently focusing on Al Arakib.

We would like to pay our highest respect to Prof. Cleveringa, for his bold action, taken in the defense of universal principles of human rights. However, as Israeli citizens who care for these principles’ the choice to hold the Cleveringa lecture at the Hebrew University seems completely erroneous to us.
The Hebrew University is not a politically neutral institution. In addition to the incidents mentioned above, the Hebrew University is a constant and willing collaborator with the Israeli Defense Force - a military force over which hover well founded allegations of war crimes, including the bombing and destruction of Palestinian Universities and severe disruption of their academic life, or the bombing of media centers and radio stations. The Hebrew University has been involved in the development of weaponry for use by the Israeli military and in the training of the top military weapons’ researchers. The university even hosts a military base within its Givat Ram campus. All of this does not bode well with the principles of human rights.

Ariel is part of the oppressive separation regime that is trying to
camouflage itself and the refusal to perform there.
...While within the Green Line there still exist important qualities of a democratic regime, as doubtful and under assault as they may be, beyond the Green Line there is an occupation regime of discrimination and separation both de facto and de jure.

A report published today by Who Profits exposes the financial support provided by Israeli banks to illegal Israeli settlements and the direct involvement of Israeli banks in control over the Palestinian banking market. The report, "Financing the Occupation,” investigated the involvement of Israeli banks in the economy of occupation: "Israeli banks provide the financial infrastructure for all activities of companies, governmental agencies and individuals in the continuing occupation of Palestine and the Syrian Golan Heights. The services provided by the banks support and sustain these activities," according to the report.
Merav Amir, Who Profits Research Coordinator, said today: "Our research provides evidence that the banks are well aware of the types and whereabouts of the activity that is being carried out with their financial assistance, and exposes the ways in which they are supporting illegitimate activities that violate international law".

Yet at this very time, when the State of Israel, having already fought six full scale-wars to maintain its very existence, with the loss of some thousands of its finest sons in war,it is still today in a very precarious situation, surrounded by enemies all around who are threatening to "wipe it off the map" . Yet at this very time, I repeat, a Jew, who was born in Israel and educated at the Israeli taxpayer's expense, who has written and has had published several books for sale in countries abroad,denying the very right of this nation even to exist at all, is allowed to teach "contemporary history" at Tel-Aviv University and spread his obnoxious and treacherous ideas to the students in his care, and to the general public and politicians in the world at large, and moreover have his salary paid by the Israeli taxpayer, whom he has the impertinence to describe as being "of mythical background in history and of belonging to a nation that has never existed".

The idea of the Jewish nation was conceived before the organization of the Zionist movement in the nineteenth century and continued long after the creation of the state of Israel. In The Words and the Land, post-Zionist Israeli historian Shlomo Sand examines how both Jewish and Israeli intellectuals contributed to this process. One by one, he identifies and calls into question the foundation myths of the Israeli state, beginning with the myth of a people forcibly uprooted, a people-race that began to wander the world in search of a land of asylum. This was a people that
would define itself on a biological and “mythological-religious” basis, embodied in words that today feed Israeli political, literary, and historical writing: “exile,” “return,” and “ascent” (Alyah) to
the land of its origins.

In this fashion, a group of Jewish writers, political activists and others began in the second half of the nineteenth century to shape the history (mythistory) of the Jewish people. All Jews, they said, come from a single stock originating from the loins of the founding patriarch, Abraham. In the ancient past, they were citizens of a powerful Jewish state called Israel, were exiled after the destruction of the second temple in AD 70, and since that time have lived as exiles in nations where they have suffered persecution. It is time, they said, to recreate the Nation of Israel so that its people can return to it and live there.
Using the Biblical narrative as a history text, they began to construct the history of the Jewish people as a People Set Apart from all others. Their history, so the story line goes, “rests on firm and precise truths.” The problem with this is, none of it can be shown to be scientifically verified truth. Instead, it is what Professor Sand calls “mythistory”. The Zionists were having none of it. Using what we now know was pseudoscience, early Zionist thinkers turned to physical anthropology, social Darwinism and, later to eugenics to build their case for identifying the Jewish people as being biologically different from all others. “The purpose of Jewish biology,” Professor Sand writes “was to promote separation from others… It sought to serve the project of ethnic nationalist consolidation in the taking over of an imaginary ancient homeland.”

The third partner in the article, a Tel Aviv University professor of philosophy, Anat Biletzki, says the article knocks the scientific basis out from under the claim that the conflict is unilateral, and that the Palestinians attack Israel while Israel "only reacts."
"We are hoping the article will contribute facts and numbers to the public discussion of the conflict," says Biletzki, who for many years headed B'Tselem.
Biletzki contributes a political diagnosis of her own: "I don't need scientific research to determine that all the behavior of the Palestinians is a reaction to the Israeli occupation. For this, common sense is enough."

The Organizing committee of the BDS Conference wishes to share some exciting news: the participation of the Confederation of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) will make this a TRULY historic moment in the movement against Israeli apartheid in Canada and Québec!
On Friday evening, October 22, 2010, the conference opening panel, “From Sharpeville to Gaza, 5 years of BDS” will feature Sidumo Dlamini, COSATU President, COSATU International Affairs Secretary Bongani Masuku, and Omar Barghouti, founding member of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI).

Now, the fifth time that structures are rebuilt without authorization in the Bedouin village of Al-Arkib, south of Rahat in the Negev. Amongst those who call for the rebuilding of these structures illegally, while ignoring court and police evacuation orders, are: [TAU, Education] Prof' Avner Ben-Amos, member of the secretariat of the Negev Coexistence Forum for Civil Equality - Dukium, [TAU, Latin American studies], Prof' Efraim Davidi announcing on behalf of Hadash party, a solidarity event with illegal Bedouin village of Al-Arkib. [TAU, Cohn] Roy Wagner calling for support and [Sapir College] Yeela Raanan announcing "Demolitions this morning AGAIN in El Araqib. Demonstration at Lehavim Jct. at 17:00". Please find at the bottom BGU Prof' Oren Yiftachel's account of the court hearing on the Uqbi case.

Anarchists Against the Wall is a direct action group that fights against Israeli apartheid and oppression in all its forms, most recently also the atrocities in Gaza. For five years the group has waged a constant struggle against Israel’s Wall. The work on the ground in the West Bank, alongside the Palestinian popular movement is breaking new ground in the joint struggle for Palestinian liberation. ...
Yoav Barak, a member of AAtW will speak about the strugge. Come to learn more about the group, their work and help support them financially. They are constantly facing legal costs

Dr Roy Wagner, a fellow at The Minerva Humanities Center, writes a weekly email update to fellow activists on the Friday demonstrations of Palestinians in Bil'in, on behalf of Anarchists Against the Wall. He wrote of himself to be in charge of of instructing Israeli and international new demonstrators and of the First Aid kit.

The president of Tel Aviv University asked to see the lists of reading material taught in several sociology courses at the university last week, in the wake of allegations that Israeli universities have a "post-Zionist" bias in their sociology departments.
The Institute for Zionist Strategies, which issued the report, defines post-Zionism as "the pretense to undermine the foundations of the Zionist ethos and an affinity with the radical leftist stream."

The Israeli police arrested Gadi Elgazi after arriving together with members of the movement Tarabut - Hitchabrut to support Bedouins who built illegally in El-Arkib. He was arrested while trying to prevent the police from executing court orders and was released later that evening.
The Bedouins in El Arkib lived in the North of Israel until 8 years ago but due to tribal dispute have moved to the Negev. Land was allocated for them in Rahat but they decided to move to El Arkib without legal rights to the land. The Israeli court ruled the village is built illegally.

“The Plight of the Palestinians. A Long History of Destruction”, edited by Professor William A. Cook, is a timely anthology in which outstanding, anti-racist, humanitarian scholars (many of them Jewish) describe the horrible reality of the ongoing Palestinian Genocide that is a blot on Jewry and a blot on Humanity.
The book begins with an Acknowledgment of collaborators, writers, journals and of writers whose works were offered but could not be included in this collection. The editor then provides a series of succinct Biographies of the various authors (that are provided in an even more succinct form below). The scholarly accounts of what is described throughout the book as the ongoing Palestinian Genocide are prefaced by an Introduction, “The Untold Story of the Zionist Intent to Turn Palestine into a Jewish State” by William A. Cook (Professor of English at the University of La Verne, Southern California, USA). The remainder of the book is composed of separate chapters with similarly self-explanatory titles by particular authors, each chapter deriving from an article previously published in various media.
18. Adi Ophir (associate professor, Cohn Institute, Tel Aviv University; fellow, Van Leer Jerusalem Institute; author of “Order of Evils”, “Terrible Days: Between Disaster and Utopia”, and “Working for the Present”; founded and edited the journal for critical theory “Theory and Criticism” ), “Genocide Hides Behind Expulsion”, (1-16-2004).

On the 25th of June Roy Wagner, a fellow at the Cohn Institute, Tel Aviv University, spoke at the French Senate at a pro-Palestine event on behalf of the "Anarchists Against the Wall", a group aiding the Palestinians in their struggle against Israel. Israel Academia Monitor brings you a report of the event:
Roy Wagner wants to speak in French.
He said that he participates in nonviolent protests with the Israeli left. Small group of people join the nonviolent resistance.
He says he is there because:
1) We Israelis are here as witnesses of Palestinian people real life, because we are more credible than the Palestinians themselves.
2) To protect the Palestinians against Israeli’s violence.
3) Israel tries to prevent us from being there, they arrest us, they beat us and they shoot us.
4) He is one of the Anarchists Against the Wall.
5) We need money to cover legal fees.
6) We spend our nights in Palestinian villages. The Medias wait for us, they want to help us recover the stolen land.
7) Among his students' friends, there are influential people.
8) Actually, there will be no end to occupation but normalization.
9) Our goal is the end of apartheid and the end of the occupation.
10) Our friends are en route to support it and they need you.

Three years later, in November 2009, the general body of CWP (the Coalition of Women for Peace) reconvened to review the BDS discussion. Strikingly, this time support for the general call for BDS was unanimous. Throughout those three years we witnessed the attacks and the siege on Gaza; the occupation in the West Bank has further entrenched itself as a form of apartheid regime; this was all done with the support of Israeli public opinion. At the same time, the BDS movement has grown globally, and CWP has played an important part in it through its three-year research project entitled Who Profits from the Occupation. Through the project we have studied new facets of the economy of the occupation, and the results of our three year study have played an important part in showing how the use of boycott, divestment and sanctions is justified, necessary, and potentially very effective in our work for a just peace in Israel/Palestine.

Merav Amir from the Coalition of Women for Peace, a Tel Aviv group opposed to the occupation of Palestine, said it would be "highly problematic" for the EU to draw a distinction between military and non-military research in the case of Israel.
"The military here is used as part of this whole mechanism of control that is much wider than anything that is done at gunpoint," she said. "There are also a wide range of civilian means used for depriving Palestinians of their basic human rights. Any aspect of the occupation that you look at is done through a wide range of technologies, whether they be biometric means, security cameras, fences, sensors and so on. It is not simply things that are aimed to kill."

In the past two years I have been invited to take part in many conferences hosted by the American Anthropological Association. The topic of discussion at these forums has been the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I agreed to take on a thankless task not as a spokesman for Israel's education ministers or as a mouthpiece of the right or left. I appeared before an academic audience not noted for its sympathetic views on Israeli policy. This group is more inclined to support the Palestinians, albeit with the belief that neither side holds a monopoly on truth and justice. I tried to place this awful conflict in the context of two truths, with two claims that contradict each other in terms of historical facts and painful memories, between two national movements that have lost all sense of proportion while striving for a settlement that does not provide either side with complete justice.
Alas, I have no plans to accept similar invitations in the future. In the past year, I have lost the conviction that I can truthfully speak for the current Israeli government's suicidal behavior.

[A group of film makers signed a letter supporting the decision of chain of cinemas not to screen an Israeli film as a result of the Flotilla incident.
As a result of the Flotilla incident, a group of Israeli film makers sent a letter to the 'Utopia' chain of cinemas in France where they called for the cancellation of the screening of the Israeli film "5 hours from Paris" in France. Amongst the signatories, Israel Prize winner of cinema Judd Ne'eman.
In the end the film was screened after European film makers asked for it.

After the release of the Goldstone Report as well as the incident of the Mavi Marmara, human rights associations, including B’Tselem, are mentioned as betrayers in many talk show programs in Israel,” she said.
“We used to be thought of as completely reliable organizations. We are now not only doing our work but also constantly dealing with saying we are not biased, one-sided or collaborating with any enemy,” said Biletzki. The security issue is always coming before human rights in Israel, according to Biletzki. “The argument of ‘the security of the Israeli people’ is always winning, even in the courts.”
She said military prosecutors allowed the prosecution of two Israeli soldiers for human rights violations recently thanks to evidence collected by human rights activists. “We are improving slowly,” she said.

Today, June 9 2010, Uri Hadar, my partner, was slated to participate in a public meeting at Bar Ilan University. At the last moment, yesterday night, he withdrew. I want to describe what happened.
As you probably know, Uri , a full time professor of clinical psychology at Tel Aviv University's Department of Psychology is an active participant, off and on campus, in public debate and activity aimed to criticize and bring an end to Israel's military occupation of Palestinian lands. He is a founding member of FFIPP (Faculty for Israeli and Palestinian Peace) and of Psychoactive (Israeli Mental Health Professionals for Human Rights). He regularly participates in meetings and conferences, as well as publishes, on the upholding of human rights, dialogue and reconciliation in Israel/Palestine. He belongs to a small but growing number of Israeli academics who expressly address the occupation in their university teaching on the assumption that the social, cultural, political and epistemological context in which he and his students meet and negotiate knowledge is deeply implied in the formation and communication of that knowledge.

Dr. Anat Matar, a senior lecturer in Tel-Aviv University’s philosophy department and a tireless pro-Palestinian activist, recently presented an impassioned defense of boycotts against Israel on a web-site forum discussion of the subject.
Her views provide an intriguing insight into the grotesque irony underlying the Radical Left’s support of external--i.e., international-- pressure to remedy what they perceive as the evils of the “occupation” and Israel’s ill-treatment of the Palestinians.
Dr. Matar describes the boycott as a “political instrument” initiated by Palestinians in 2005 [under the heading Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel] as a component of the “unarmed” struggle against Israel’s “apartheid.” Drawing inspiration from South Africa’s Black-White struggle, it was intended as a complement to ongoing “non-violent” acts of resistance, such as the demonstrations against the security fence, protests against land seizure and against similar alleged Israeli offenses. The concept behind the boycott, Matar notes, was to strike a path between the poles of armed confrontation and the “farce” of being part of the Palestinian Authority’s engagement in the “peace process.”

(Dr. Roy Wagner is a fellow at the Minerva Humanities Center, The Cohn Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas .You can read his words appearing on American Friends of Tel Aviv University )
The email below is sent by Dr. Kobi Snitz of Weizmann Institute to fellow activists of "Anarchists Against the Wall", announcing Roy Wagner, as their Israeli representative in a day long session to promote the Palestinian cause at the French senate. There, he will speak of the joint Palestinian-Israeli popular struggle taking place in Jayyous, Maasara, Nabi Saleh, Ni'ilin, Budrus, Biddu, Beit Liqqiya, The Jordan Valley, Sheik Jarah and Bilin.

Stand Up…and Break the Siege
Call for participation and Support
You are all invited to participate in the first event of the Beiteen Road Campaign. This campaign aims to raise awareness on the Beiteen Road-and eventually open the road- that was closed by Israel. As a result of this closure, thousands of Palestinians are forced each day to take a much longer path to get to their schools, work, hospitals…and are humiliated by occupations’ unjustified and unjust policies.
When? The launching event will take place on Friday June 11th, 2010 after Friday prayer

From my Israeli perspective as well, my sense is that we are witnessing a deliberate attempt to eliminate any chance of a just peace in the Middle East. The truth must be said: The present-day Israeli regime is not interested in peace. The Israeli establishment has become prisoner to an ever growing public of Jewish fanatics -- informed by messianic visions of Greater Israel -- who over the years not only irreversibly settled in the occupied West Bank, with state funding, but have also penetrated the ranks of army officers, the civil service and the government. The outcome is that the current Israeli regime is firmly grounded in a religiously guided, ultranationalist and xenophobic worldview, one which is bound to bring calamity to the whole region, including Israel.

During the last decade and a half, since the Oslo Agreement (1993) Prof' Tanya Reinhart, the linguist and political activist, taught the course "Written in the Papers" at Tel Aviv University. This book is based on her lectures. This is a course on analyzing the political media:In every class Israeli papers of that week were analysed, in conjunction with the theoretical background on critical media and its role in a democratic society. The main issues dealt with here - As of the fact that a small minority controls the bulk of wealth and the media, or the way in which the media collaborates with the regime in forming obedient public opinion - As relevant as ever. Also the concrete events that their media coverage are analysed here in length - Like Hezbollah rockets landing in Kiryat Shmona, Holocaust memorial day recruited for the purpose of the "Iranian Threat", or the never ending faltered "Peace Process" alongside a growing occupation - Are read as if they were written today.
With Dr. Ran HaCohen and columnist Gideon Levy on 10.06 at TAU Webb Building at 18:00-20:00.

Not many atrocities can be less controversial than Israel’s attack on the Turkish-based flotilla heading to Gaza yesterday. Like Somali pirates, Israel attacked the boats in international waters. Like the darkest regimes, Israeli forces opened fire on unarmed civilians who had not posed a threat to anybody, except to the siege that Israel (with Egyptian co-operation and U.S. backing) imposes on Gaza. Condemnation of what the Turkish prime minister rightly termed “an act of state terrorism” has been global, except for the shameful mumbling of the American government (but what can you expect from the complicit?).

A list of activists will discuss how 1948 was erased from the political discourse in Israel and how did 1967 became the starting point of every political thought for the solution of the Israel-Palestinian conflict. What is the political meaning of return to 1948?
Wednesday, 2nd of June 14:00-20:00 at Webb Building, Tel Aviv University
Anti-Israel Participants: Merav Amir (Cohn Institute), Adel Manna (Beit Berl and Van Leer), Norma Musih (Hebrew U, PhD Candidte and a founding member of "Zochrot" for commemorating the Nakba), Hillel Cohen (Hebrew University), Itay Snir (Tel Aviv University) Shimon Ballas (Haifa University), Lev Grinberg (Ben Gurion University), Ismail Nashef (Ben Gurion University), Ronen Ben Arieh (Cohn Institute, TAU), Hunaida Ganem (heads a Palestinian research centre in the West Bank), Oren Yiftachel (Ben Gurion University and co-chair of B'Tselem)

Mor-Yosef charged that upon entering the auditorium, the reporter was asked by Professor Gadi Elgazi, one of the organizers of the conference and the head of the General History Department, to which media outlet he belonged. Upon hearing the answer, claimed Mor-Yosef, the response from Elgazi, who is one of the first Israelis to refuse to serve in the military, was that he was not prepared to permit “settlers to cover the conference.” Mor-Yosef wrote that in the course of the disagreement that ensued between Elgazi and the reporter, many students gathered around Zucker and physically prevented him from covering the conference.

As someone who has been with Tel Aviv University for forty years, I am well familiar with the intensive, unrelenting and extremist activities of a number of the members of the academic staff of our University, who will not miss a single occasion to accuse this country of the worst crimes, support the most extreme forms of academic boycott against the Israeli academia, and offer support and encouragement to those whose explicit purpose is the elimination of Israel, as the home of the Jewish people.
The purpose of this letter is not to reiterate what is known to all who are honest enough to admit it, but to draw your attention to lesser known facts about the unwillingness of the officials of Tel Aviv University to stand up to what became an
organized campaign of the vilification of Israel. Any attempt to put a halt to it is countered by the argument that the “McCarthyites” are trying to suppress academic freedom and free speech on the campus.

At a recent symposium under the auspices of Tel-Aviv University’s Cohn Institute of the History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas, members of the radical left addressed the topic: Analysis of the Occupation: Toward a New Research Paradigm? The question mark is in the original.
The gathering was organized to consider the formulation of a new “analytical” model to describe the relationship between Israel and its Arab citizens and the situation in the “occupied” territories; a model that would replace the current conceptual--and legal-- mind-set that sees the situation as a “temporary” condition with one that recognizes the occupation as a “permanent reality” and would encourage new ways of thinking and responding to it.

“Dear Palestinians,” I repeated my imaginings and turned to you, and to your brothers and sisters here and beyond the green line. “Since they expelled you, you appear nightly in our dreams. A trembling passes through the body, a shock in the memory of the violent expulsion. Since the night that you left only terror filled dreams pursue us. What point was there to your expulsion if you did not cease to live in our bodies, in our souls – sons and daughters to the parents who expelled you ?! What was the point if we were sentenced to lie about the memory of your expulsion to our children or to tell them but with that to prepare them for the fact that around them everyone is lying to them when they say that there was no expulsion and thus to cause their lying society to be loathsome to them?! Return. Return to live with us again. We need you! 750,000 Palestinians and their descendents can change our lives here. We are sick of seeing around us only faces that are similar to our own. It is clear to us that we cannot live alone. We need the other, and there is no other as close as you. Come! Let us live here together!”

1) The burden should not only be on students to stand up to propagandizing professors who distort the truth in the name of extremist ideologies.'
2) Mark Tanenbaum had proposed a resolution to the board of governors, requesting that the university senate investigate the political activity of professors who use the school’s name.
Tanenbaum’s proposal comes as a response to outspoken TAU professors advocating an academic boycott of Israel and the university. The proposal cites faculty bylaws “Breach of Discipline” restriction on faculty listing their affiliation with TAU on any document or statement of a political nature when participating in any domestic or international forums of political nature.
Tanenbaum described Klaffter yelling into the microphone that he would not tolerate any infringement on academic freedom within the university immediately after the proposal was read.

One horrifying incarnation of this are settlers who now colonize Israel itself. In Israel’s mixed towns – from Tel Aviv (of which Jaffa is part) to Acre – settlers from the West Bank establish nests of hatred in the form of Jewish-Orthodox groups living together and, disguised as “Torah schools” and “social work,” incite and spread the word: Jews in, Arabs out. Palestinians are harassed and sometimes physically attacked. The riots in Acre in 2008 were the result of such settlers’ activity; tensions are now rapidly growing in several mixed towns, including Jaffa, where settlers recently broke into a Palestinian home, attacking its owner and telling her that they “will force all Arabs out of Jaffa.”
While the entire Arab world is willing to compromise and accept Israel more than ever before, and while wise heads in Israel and outside are still chewing the eternal “One State vs. Two States” debate, a One-State Solution is being implemented, as Israel is turning from a state with a colony to a colony with a state.

As Historians who know very well the periods of the past where the enlightened democracy declined into a dark regime, we are very concerned with some of the things said. Mr. Dershowitz viciously attacked academic members of the university criticizing the policy of the government, he specifically named some members of staff and accused them for leading narrow-minded thinking as they impose their opinions on students

Building a just and lasting peace anchored in international law and universal human rights, conducive to ethical coexistence requires the ethical decolonization, or de-Zionization of historic Palestine. Such a process is premised on a revitalized, democratized Palestinian civil resistance movement with a clear vision for a shared, just society and effective worldwide support for reaffirming Palestinian rights and ending Israel's violations of international law and universal rights.

Participants: Yossi Schwartz, Ronen Shamir, Adi Ophir, Ariella Azoulay, Dalit Baum, Meron Benvenisti, Hassan Jabarin, Neve Gordon, Oren Yiftachel and Merav Amir.. A series of researches published in recent years create a new knowledge body on the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian Territories, a knowledge which interprets the occupation, from fresh, as controlled institutionalized system and as a noted regime type. These researches produce an ambitious intellectual project that rejects the previous perceptions of the occupation as a temporary phenomenon, legal by character, and requests to explore the ways in which the systematic acts of various mechanism. While trying to implement analytic tools from the fields of current political theory, in parallel to contribute to it and to expand it, these researches present the occupation as another model in the gallery of oppressive regimes of the 20th century, while emphasizing it's unique characteristics. What is the added value of those researches in relation to the enormous knowledge which is distributed on the occupation by human rights organizations, humanitarian organizations and political activists? Is there enough to change in real the ways in which the occupation is represented, as well as the view of it? What political value would these researches have and what is their theoretical contribution to the political thinking discipline and to the understanding of politics these days.

The Time of the Green Line, a recently published Hebrew book that offers a deep critique of the liberal Zionist left from a radical perspective. Its author is Yehuda Shenhav, an established public intellectual with academic credentials.
Shenhav puts forward two large claims about the Zionist left, the first being that it lives in a state of complete denial regarding the fundamentals of the Israel-Palestinian conflict. According to Shenhav, the Zionist left has persuaded itself that the basic point of contention in the conflict lies in the results of the Six-Day war, which ended with Israel having seized the Sinai peninsula (long since returned to Egypt), Gaza (now under Hamas), the Golan Heights (claimed by Syria), and, especially, the West Bank with its large Palestinian population. Therefore, reasons the Zionist left, once Israel hands back the West Bank, "1967" will have been reversed and peace will become possible.
To Shenhav, this is a delusion. Zero hour for the Palestinians, he contends, was and remains not 1967 but 1948: i.e., the founding of Israel itself. Averting its eyes from this fact, the Zionist left has fabricated an artificial starting point in time (1967) and space (the green line) in order to preserve to its own satisfaction the basic legitimacy of Israel's establishment in 1948. The trouble is that the Palestinians will never agree to this construction of history, because it fails to take into account their most fundamental grievances.

More than half of Jewish Israelis think human rights organizations that expose immoral behavior by Israel should not be allowed to operate freely, and think there is too much freedom of expression here, a recent survey found.
The survey, commissioned by the Tami Steinmetz Center for Peace Research at Tel Aviv University, will be presented Wednesday at a conference on the limits of freedom of expression
The pollsters surveyed 500 Jewish Israelis who can be considered a representative sample of the adult Jewish population.
They found that 57.6 percent of the respondents agreed that human rights organizations that expose immoral conduct by Israel should not be allowed to operate freely.

Remember it next time you talk to an Israeli: especially outside Israel, you might hear not the truth, but the official state propaganda. Though many Israelis sincerely believe the two are identical.
The deep racism of the Israeli psyche is on the rise. The 1990s, at least in hindsight, marked some liberalization of the public discourse; the first decade of this century crushed it, and now the mildly critical, left-liberal discourse hardly exists in the mainstream. No wonder the liberal left has just 3 seats out of 120 in the Knesset; all the other parties are various shades of right-wing, far right, or fascism (except the small outcast "Arab" parties). The racist mindset can be observed in the most trivial daily situations, like my elderly neighbor, when told I saw someone peeping at my window the other night, instinctively reacting with a single question: "Have you seen whether it was a Jew or an Arab?"

As Israeli citizens, we are concerned by the policies of the Israeli governments, policies which violate international law, violate the basic human rights of Palestinians under occupation and serve to instigate instability, violence and suffering in the Middle East. We are also concerned by the double standards applied by some countries in the international community, especially the developed countries, towards Israel's violations. Such double standards imbue violent and blatantly illegal Israeli policies of land theft, torture and physical abuse of civilians with an aura of legitimacy.We believe that only when the international community makes Israel accountable for its actions, can we hope to see a change in Israeli policies.
As Israeli citizens, we wish to voice our strong support for the call issued to OECD countries by numerous Palestinian organizations, and numerous international organizations, including Palestinian solidarity campaigns around the world. Please note that the call also refers to the racist policies towards, and discrimination against, those Palestinians who are Israeli citizens.

Why should one turn to photography when there are no photographs?
This is a question that arises in times of disaster, when the absence of photographs is symptomatic. But the absence of photographs should also be understood as a possibility of photography itself. In order to link these two claims I propose to discuss the ontology of photography, drawing a basic distinction between the event of photography and the photograph which is only one of its products. I will look closely at traces of one particular disaster, the Palestinian Naqba, examining a series of photographs from the period which were part of the exhibition Constituent Violence 1947-1950 that I curated last year (Tel Aviv, March-June 2009). The exhibition consisted of some 200 photographs (most of which were drawn from Zionist archives) and provided a visual genealogy of the transformation of the Palestinian disaster into a "disaster from their point of view".

We, at BOYCOTT!i, a group of Israeli citizens, strive to stop our government's human rights and international law violations, which have been facilitated by the cooperation of international companies. Your company has gone a great length in getting involved with the Israeli land and resources annexation, segregation and continued colonization of Palestine. As you were told by your country's Irish Palestine Solidarity Campaign (IPSC), by investing in the Israeli group Mashav Initiating and Development Ltd., you are profiting from the Israeli colonization of Palestinian territory and facilitating illegal settlement expansion and population segregation. Israeli settlements are illegal by international law, as determined by a number of UN Security council resolutions and according to the Fourth Geneva Convention. In fact, as exposed last year by an Israeli army whistleblower, building and land-seizing violations of Israel's own laws are committed by "the very heart of the settlement enterprise", with the silent approval of the Israeli government and security establishment.

First and foremost, the Jewish society in Israel needs to understand that a return to 1948 is an essential condition to resolving the conflict. Israel has to acknowledge the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian territories and to treat this issue as the most salient issue of the conflict. It requires a solution for the Palestinian refugees problem, including their return under conditions which will not endanger the lives of the Jews. I lay out these conditions in the book. I also suggest that we need to think about re-partitioning of the space based on multiple sovereignties and spheres of control, allowing for the return of Palestinian refugees without jeopardizing the achievements of the Jews during the last sixty years. At the same time it also allows for some of the Jewish settlements in the West Bank to remain intact, conditioned on accepting the broader plan and providing compensations. If we accept the 1948 paradigm it can turn Israel’s political map on its head. The liberal Zionists in Israel who support a two states solution do it out of fear of the Palestinans. The idea of a Jewish and democratic state is an oxymoron since Israel is a democracy which is founded on a constant state of exception and emergency measures. The Israeli liberal left is a leading force in denying 1948 and the refugees problem. I suggest to create productive coalitions among Palestinians, the Israeli radical left, and democratic groups among the Jewish settlers who reject the two state solution but express desire for political justice to replace the current apartheid system of rule.

The professor explained that the struggle for Palestinian equality in Israel and the territories was important. "This is a national political minority struggling to receive the same rights that the citizens of Israel are given," he said. "Ten thousand people arrived in Sakhnin to tell the state to behave differently, and to recognize the needs and dreams of our neighbors."

Psychoactive held it's second conference at TAU on 21 of Feb. 2010.
...the international community has repeatedly asserted that the Israeli occupation violates its norms. A complete commercial and economic boycott can be very effective in bringing Israel
into line with these international norms... Only a call for an academic boycott that would be detailed in
this manner stands a chance

Opening the gates is all Israel has to do on its own in order to prevent famine in the Gaza Strip. A bunch of humanitarian organizations, UN agencies, special delegates of the EU, and other diplomats readily place themselves as a buffer between the catasrophizing machinery of the Occupation and the catastrophe itself. They help Israel suspends "the real" catastrophe while catastophizing the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The suspension itself has become part of the machinery of catastrophization, and the suspended catastrophe has become an essential element in the machinery of the Israeli rule and domination of the Territories.

The Israeli co-editors of the book are Adi Ophir is Professor of Philosophy and Political Theory at the Cohn Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas at Tel Aviv University and Michal Givoni is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Tel Aviv University.
The move by Hanafi has caused a quite a stir at the AUB campus and a petition has been created against normalisation of relations: We note regretfully that the name of the University has recently appeared in the volume The Power of Inclusive Exclusion: Anatomy of Israeli Rule in the Occupied Palestinian Territories published by Zone Books (2009), under the auspices of the Van Leer Institute in Jerusalem and co-edited by the AUB sociologist Sari Hanafi. We note that beginning the first of March of the year 2010, Dr. Hanafi will be traveling in Europe with Dr. Adi Ophir of Tel Aviv University to promote their edited book at several universities including the London School of Economics, the University of Cambridge and the School of Oriental and African Studies. The use of the name of the American University of Beirut lends institutional legitimacy and intellectual authority to these efforts in a manner that sets an alarming precedent. We expect that this association will be used abroad to signal that normal academic exchange between institutions in Lebanon and Israel is now an accepted practice, leaving a distinct impression that we have transcended the conflict and its root causes. It sends a message to our colleagues, our students, our public, and the world at large that there is no real issue between us and that we can enter into a normal relationship of academic collaboration.

The lengthy campaign paid off
The SF Jewish Federation finally adopts a policy that can prevent it from funding events that demonize Israel and/or organizations that collaborate with groups that try to harm Israel.
Its enforcement remains crucial, yet ambiguous.
The pro-Israel community in the San Francisco Bay Area deserves much credit. After seven months of an intense campaign, its efforts bore fruit: the San Francisco Jewish Federation finally adopted a policy that should prevent Federation grantees from demonizing and defaming Israel and/or collaborating with groups that try to delegitimize Israel, and harm it via mechanisms such as boycotts, divestment and sanctions (BDS).
Federation grantees that collaborate with groups that try to vilify and harm Israel, such as the Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and the extremist hate-group, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), will have to choose between receiving financial support from the Federation and continuing to work with and continue to collaborate with anti-Israel groups. If the Federation enforces its new policy, it will no longer fund groups that organize fiascoes such as the Rachel Corrie event

Instead of recounting the daily problems facing Israel, such as the stalled peace process with the Palestinians and the military threat posed by Iran, Sand's book probes deeper questions of identity.
''The real problem facing Israel is much, much more than the occupation of the Palestinian territories or our borders with Syria. It is about our history.''
Sand rejects the very basis for creation of the Jewish state. ''There simply was no exile,'' he says. ''How is it possible that the Romans could have exiled a whole people from a land? It is impossible.'' And if there was no exile, Sand argues, then there can be no justification for return. ''How could Zionism justify the return of the Jews to a land from which the Jews never left? Without this, the whole basis for creating the modern state of Israel collapses.''
Often labelled an anti-Zionist Israel basher, Sand describes himself as post-Zionist.

I went to a recent talk given by Dr. Anat Matar on her recent visit to London.
Dr Matar is a senior lecturer in the Department of Philosophy at Tel Aviv University.
She is also an Israeli citizen who wants the world to boycott Israel.
She is a member of Who Profits? Exposing the Israeli Occupation Industry.
Dr. Matar feels that the only way to end Israel’s occupation of the West Bank is for there to be an economic, cultural and academic boycott of her own country.
Imagine boycotting yourself! Would any Brit or American call for a boycott of their respective countries over Afghanistan or Iraq?

LONDON – A Tel Aviv University professor is set to open this year’s “Israel Apartheid Week” taking place at three London university campuses.
Adi Ophir, an associate professor at TAU’s Cohn Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science, will open the event on Monday. “Israel Apartheid Week” takes place at the School of Oriental and African Studies, the London School of Economics and University College London.
In a talk titled “Anatomy of rule in the occupied Palestinian territories,” Ophir, who is author of the book The Power of Inclusive Exclusion: Anatomy of Israeli Rule in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, will share a platform with Sari Hanafi, an associate professor of sociology at the American University of Beirut.

Professor Yehouda Shenhav recently published a book called The Green Line Trap. Shenhav was interviewed on the occasion of the book’s publication; among other things he recommended that we give up on dividing the land in favor of the one-state solution. This is a familiar genre: Shenhav belongs to a group of Post-Zionist intellectuals who boast of titles such as “the radical Left” and “post-colonialism” while demanding that the Jews give up their right for self-determination, in the name of democracy, of course.
This matter is presented in a veneer of human rights jargon and is premised on a more general position being voiced in academia for years now: Post-colonial studies. According to this position, the West is a staunch enemy of democracy while all of the West’s victims are, implicitly at least, democracy’s defenders. According to Shenhav, this is the case around here too: All we need to do is annul the Western apartheid known as Israel, and we’ll see the emergence of a wonderful democracy with an Arab majority.

While it is crucial for scholars in relevant fields to expose and analyze the colonial situation in Palestine, this academic imperative should not imply that one overlooks how scholarship engages this colonialism. That is, this book, as a collaboration of various scholars – Israeli and non-Israeli contributors – was completed with support from the Van Leer Institute [2]. In other words, through working under the aegis of the Van Leer Institute, this project has cooperated with one of the very institutions that PACBI and an overwhelming majority of Palestinian academics and intellectuals have called for boycotting. As such, the research project which led to the production of the volume violates the criteria of the academic and cultural boycott as set by PACBI and widely endorsed in Palestinian civil society, including by the Palestinian Federation of Unions of University Professors and Employees (PFUUPE) and University Teachers’ Association in Palestine
Contrary to the claims of some left-wing Israeli academics that the Van Leer institute is an incubator for cutting-edge critical thinking and oppositional politics, the Institute is firmly planted in the prevailing Zionist consensus and is part and parcel of the structures of oppression and domination. It subscribes to the “vision of Israel as both a homeland for the Jewish people and a democratic society, predicated on justice, fairness and equality for all its residents,” ignoring the oxymoron presented by this inherently exclusionary vision — a “Jewish State” of necessity discriminates against its “non-Jewish” citizens. The Van Leer Institute receives financial support from other Israeli universities and state institutions that are subject to boycott. Among its financial contributors and institutional “friends” are the Cohn Institute at Tel Aviv University; the Edelstein Center at the Hebrew University; the Israel Ministry of Science; the National Insurance Institute, Israel; and the Jewish Agency for Israel.
...Though intellectual projects may aim to rigorously articulate the complex matrix of control that exists in Palestine, the intellectual process has a fundamental ethical and political component. As such, it is incumbent upon all scholars to realize that any collaboration which brings together Israeli and international academics (Arabs or otherwise) under the auspices of Israeli institutions is counterproductive to fighting Israeli colonial oppression, and is therefore subject to boycott.

"An acceptable settlement must thus walk the extra mile and offer, over and above the six elements just cited, actual return of a substantial number of Palestinian refugees to Israel within the Green Line."

Needless to say, the excavations run by Elad and the IAA violate professional rules of ethics concerning "equitable partnerships and relationships" between archaeologists and indigenous peoples (as stipulated by the World Archeological Congress) as well as the universally accepted convention on excavation, including excavating in occupied territories (the New Delhi Agreements). That science is being sacrificed to serve a narrow political agenda can be seen from the fact that not one of the historical Muslim buildings in the national park has been preserved, and some were not even documented.
Many Israeli archeologists are unhappy with this situation, though most of them are unwilling to openly criticize the IAA, their main source for jobs and funds. Still, a small group of Israeli archeologists led by Dr. Rafi Greenberg (Tel Aviv University) has established ties with the residents of Silwan and has been lobbying for Elad’s removal from the site. Renowned scholars throughout the world, including many senior historians and archaeologists, have signed a petition to the same effect.

The emergence of the Israeli boycott, divestment, and sanction (BDS) movement has been influenced by a number of factors. In essence, however, the movement in Israel has been basically reactive - a response to (a) international calls following traumas, and to (b) ideas, primarily those introducing the South African
model into the international and Israeli discourse; and perhaps most significantly, it has evolved in response to (c) calls by Palestinians to the international community to boycott Israel, divest and disinvest from it, and sanction it.
Although the history of the BDS movement in Israel is reviewed here chronologically, the assumption is that all these factors have worked interactively and in tandem to influence the development of the BDS movement worldwide as well as in Israel.
The major role of the Israeli BDS movement has been to support international BDS calls against Israel and legitimize them both as clearly not anti-Semitic, as not working against Israelis but against Israeli governmental policies, and as supporting a legitimate nonviolent means by which Palestinian civil society can
reclaim and re-own its people’s rights and freedoms. Alongside solidarity with the Palestinians, the driving force behind the Israeli BDS movement has been the realization that the criminal occupation and repression of the Palestinian people,
as practiced by Israeli governments, will not be redressed without significant international pressure.

Gaza: Our Guernica – A series of events to commemorate Gaza one year after Israel’s attack
10 January, 2010
Gaza: Our Guernica organized by the Palestine Societies at SOAS
University College London
Imperial College
Kings College
Goldsmiths
University of Westminster
Wed 17th February – 7pm
***Supporting the Boycott on Israel: A View from Within***
Dr. Anat Matar (Tel Aviv University)
SOAS – Room tbc

This drama reveals the sting of the conflict and which demonstrates how the gap between liberalism and racism is hair thin. At the moment of truth, the liberal Israeli becomes domineering and racist. This is a glaring product of the nationalistic model called a “Jewish and Democratic state” and one that keeps the skeleton of 1948 hidden in closet.
Especially, since for the majority of Palestinians inside and outside the Green Line, the war of 1948 is not over yet. The “Jewish Democratic” model is based on the denial of history.
In the new anthology of Hebrew poetry about the Nakba, the periodical “Sedek” [crack] published by the editor Professor Chanan Chaver one can find solid testimony of what happened in 1948 from the mouths of Jewish poets. That is the skeleton in the closet, if it is discovered it will threaten the morality and justness of the State of Israel.
The meeting between MK Zahalka and Margalit is a metaphor of the moral crisis in which Zionism is found today. Zahalka dared in his “impudence” to point out the skeleton in the closet, the same one that Margalit is trying to hide. As in totalitarian regimes, Margalit wants to aid the regime in hiding the secret and employs symbolic violence. Margalit’s position is dangerous to the future of the Jews because it seeks to ensure the rights and security through the perpetual use of tanks, instead of opening the conflict up [and getting to the bottom of it].

Yossi Schwartz Lectured on 06 November 2009 in Berlin
A talk with Yossi Schwartz, professor of history at the Tel Aviv University and others,
...But my concern today is not as much the government but the Israeli youth. An Israeli general asked: What do you want from us? The Israeli education system is sending us 1000 faschists per year. My kids, 18 and 20 years old, I am very proud that they did not join the military. They were the only ones from their class. From this one can predict that the situation in 20 years will be worse. The destruction of the Israeli society from inside in general is not as fast as one may think. The last 30 years was spoken about it once and again. The question is, what will happen to the absurd situation of the millions of Palestinians without civil and human rights. Two States solution necessary. Israel would never have had the opportunity of 40 years of occupation without the support of USA and Europe. All the money from Europe has gone to Israel only. Israel is privileged.

Zionists themselves declared their project as a colonialist project, sometimes with a very positive meaning. Israeli apartheid in some aspects is worse than the Southafrican (26:15). The South Africans who were fighting against apartheid find this today, like Richard Goldstone, a good pro-Israel Zionist, who gave his report about it. In Israel there is no territorial apartheid, like it was in South Africa, but the Jews living in Nablus, Bethlehem etc. are concerned, there are existing separate streets for jews and Arabs. Pro-Zionist would never accept my arguments.

For forty-two years the relentless course of the Jewish urban takeover of greater Jerusalem has suffered a minimum number of setbacks and is now enjoying a predictable triumph. The name of that triumph is “the heart of the consensus.” Jerusalem – all of it – is in the heart of Israeli consensus.
Poignantly, we are launching the Jerusalem2050 website at the same time that Jerusalem has come to the fore with the brouhaha over the Gilo plans for expansion. But notice the point of upset, the source of rancor. This is not, say the almost unanimous defenders of the plans, an outpost, not a settlement, not a contested “new” neighborhood (at one point, every single one of these neighborhoods was new) where Palestinians are being ousted from their houses. This is Gilo, a suburb of Jerusalem, in the heart of Israeli consensus. On the other side, however, on the Palestinian side, and in the international discourse, this heart of Israeli consensus is just as consensually illegal, consensually immoral, consensually Occupation.

Through this report, however, the Alternative Information Center (AIC) aims to inform and empower the debate on an academic boycott by giving information not on Israeli violence and violations of international law and human rights, but on the part played in the Israeli occupation by the very academic institutions in question. The report demonstrates that Israeli academic institutions have not opted to take a neutral, apolitical position toward the Israeli occupation but to fully support the Israeli security forces and policies toward the Palestinians, despite the serious suspicions of crimes and atrocities hovering over them. Any who argue either for or against an academic boycott against Israeli institutions, we believe, should know and consider not only facts regarding the situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), but also the ways in which the Israeli academic institutions make political choices and actively take sides in the ongoing conflict.
This report deals with relevant facts about the connections between Israeli academic institutions and the occupation. It is doubtful that in the process of researching this report all facts relevant to the subject were uncovered, especially since some of the economic connections between academic institutions and private companies are actively hidden by the parties involved. The involvement of Israeli academic institutions in the occupation takes many forms and scopes, and not all Israeli academic institutions can be said to be involved on the same scale. However, all main Israeli academic institutions are involved in the occupation. Indeed, all major Israeli academic institutions, certainly the ones with the strongest international connections, were found to provide unquestionable support to Israel’s occupation. Some of the details depicted in this report are evidence of blunt and direct support to the occupation while others are more minor details, which, nonetheless, provide a clear indication of the political stance taken by academic institutions.

Israelis who fight for HR’s for Palestinians are considered to be “treasonists” Those working for these HR’s for Palestinians want Israel to be a just society and treat others fairly. HR’s are not universal and are unique to the beliefs, customs and traditions of each separate state.
There are many HR organizations that are working for the HR’s of the Palestinian people.
1989- B-Tselem was established as the information center regarding HR’s in the occupied territories. The organization has operated as a legal but non-political organization. Humanitarian law says that occupying powers cannot move their own people in to occupied territories. Violated rights of movement, to property and education. Have built roads that only Jews can travel on forcing non-Jews to travel many miles out of their way to get from one place to another, even to their workplace.
A security barrier has been constructed but the reason for the “wall” is questionable. Is it really a barrier to secure against such acts as suicide bombers or is it a method to ensure further Israeli expansion?
The Israeli/Palestinian situation has been equated with South African apartheid where the black population had not shared in the equal rights afforded to the white population.

so i had to write a paper for my exploration seminar to israel. ive been working on it a while and just finished, so i decided to post it for anyone who wants to read it.
My principle argument in the paper is that the notion of israel as a “jewish and democratic state” is untrue (as opposed to a paradox, as many others claim). the paper explains why.
Democracy in a Jewish State: a Paradox Not Yet Realized
On one of the first days in Israel, our group visited Tel Aviv University for a series of lectures concerning Israeli economy, the Israeli Arabs, and Israeli Security. During the lecture discussing the Israeli Arabs, Dr. Amal Jamal, the first Arab to be Chair of the Political Science Department presented to us the paradox of Israel as both a Jewish state and as a democracy, which is discussed commonly in the literature. He acknowledged with a smile the contradiction that this phrase brings to mind. How can a state that is a self-declared proponent of the interests of a single ethnic/religious group at the same time be a democracy?

The founding of the state of Israel was based on firmly-held views of Jewish history but new research questions some of its most fundamental principles. Do new perspectives on Israel's past require a new vision of its future?

Even though long occupation of peoples and societies in not uncommon in our time, it is possible to say that in some cases where it occurs, there is severe implications on all participating sides. The lecture will analyze the psychological implications of the occupation on the perceptions and beliefs of the occupier - The Jewish society in Israel. Will be described a mechanism of large segments of the occupying society develops in order to refrain from the psychological hardships that those challenges evoke: Dynamic psychological mechanism and a psychological sociological mechanism, centered by mechanism of sociological beliefs. At the end will be presented thoughts on the relations between those mechanisms and the strive to end the occupation.

The Israeli Occupation Archive was founded on the belief that any occupation is morally wrong and must be opposed. The takeover of a land, the denial of equal rights to its inhabitants, and their forcible eviction, are all fundamentally unacceptable and must be rejected.
It is also our conviction that punitive actions carried out by the state of Israel against native Palestinians over the years, such as the bombing of civilian population centers, cannot be justified under any circumstances. Such actions are in direct violation of international laws and conventions set out after World War II, and fall under the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court.
The Israeli Occupation Archive is grateful to the members of its Advisory Board for their invaluable support and guidance.
Members of the Advisory Board
Anat Biletzki
Anat Biletzki is a professor of philosophy at Tel Aviv University, and an Israeli peace and human rights activist for many years. She was the chairperson of the board of B’Tselem – the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories (2001-2006).

Well into its fifth decade, the Israeli occupation in the Palestinian territories can no longer be considered a temporary aberration. In the shadow of the Oslo process, the second Intifada, and the “disengagement” from and recurring assaults on Gaza, Israel’s control over Palestinian life, society, space, and land has become firmly entrenched, while acquiring more sophisticated and enduring forms.
The Power of Inclusive Exclusion analyzes the Israeli occupation as a rationalized system of political rule. With essays by leading Israeli and Palestinian scholars, a comprehensive chronology, photographs, and original documents, The Power of Inclusive Exclusion calls into question prevalent views of the occupation as either a skewed form of brutal colonization, a type of Jewish apartheid, or an inevitable response to terrorism

(Jerusalem) – In the face of intense criticism of its Middle East activities, Human Rights Watch has expanded its Middle East and North Africa (MENA) advisory board with the addition of ten members, largely based in the Middle East. While some are human rights activists in their own countries, (Iran, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, etc.), including woman’s rights, many also contribute significantly to targeting Israel through the language of human rights.
In particular, the addition of Ms. Asli Bali, and Aeyal Gross, who is known as an opponent of Israeli policies, will reinforce the political agenda of MENA heads Sara Leah Whitson and Joe Stork, as documented in NGO Monitor’s detailed analysis, “Experts or Ideologues?”....
Aeyal M. Gross, law professor Tel Aviv University, official of a number of Israeli NGOs active in campaigning against government policies, such as Gisha, ACRI; often places exclusive blame for the conflict on Israel; accuses Israel of “widespread killing of Palestinian youth”; claims that the Goldstone report reveals Israel's “great wickedness towards civilians”; supported a 2009 divestment campaign in Norway. During the 2009 York University “one state” conference controversy, Gross distorted the criticism of those who exposed the academic facade, falsely labeling them “hypocritical”.

For an Israeli Jewish psychotherapist, the attack on Gaza has precipitated a painful rethinking of the Shoa as part of a history of sacrifice and victim conversion – not least because of what it might portend for the future

*Avi Shlaim in conversation with Shlomo Sand
*Top BBC presenter hosts eulogy to author who argues that the Jewish people do not exist, as UK anti-Zionist discourse hits another low
*Diaspora Jews are descended from converts and have no historical connection with Israel. That’s just one of the claims made by a Tel Aviv University professor who’s shaken the Jewish world.

Israeli employers prefer not to hire Arabs, Ethiopians and Haredis - even those holding at least an undergraduate degree, according to a study published on Monday.
More than 83 percent of employers are repelled by the idea of hiring an Arab without a university degree, found the study conducted by the Kiryat Ono Academy.

We are Arab students at the Israeli universities writing to you in support of the proposed academic boycott of Israeli academic institutions. We believe that the boycott is timely and hopefully will help in upholding moral values of fairness, justice and equality which have been sorely missed in our region.
While the reason for the boycott is rightly what has been going on in the 1967 occupied territories, we propose another angle which affirms the need for boycott, namely our daily experience as Arabs in Israeli institutions. We are the lucky ones who have been able to pursue our studies in institutions of Higher Education, to which we arrived against great odds. Only very few among our generation have been qualified to attend universities due to the State’s discriminatory policies. Our schools mostly lack the basic facilities needed for education, and the curriculum is structured to serve the State’s goal in socializing the pupils for self-estrangement. It contains very little, if any at all, on our history and culture. Additionally, it aims to erase our historical memory and promote the official policy line of divide and rule. In short, it is modeled on curriculums that dark regimes, like Apartheid South Africa, have used to indoctrinate rather than educate. We arrive to universities with this “educational” baggage.

Tel Aviv University students are hesitant to express their political
views in class, lest lecturers perceived to have left-wing political
views penalize them with lower grades, the head of TAU's Department of Curriculum and Instruction wrote in an internal memorandum last month.
Prof. Nira Hativa's comment in the faculty memo ignited controversy among professors, with some declaring that her sentiments should not be made public.
Hativa wrote: "There are no small number of students of lecturers with left-wing views who complain bitterly that they are extremely offended by the presentation of materials that oppose their views, but are fearful of expressing contrary viewpoints in class, lest it harm their grades."

The Israeli historian Moshe Zuckermann put on 15 April 2009 before the agf-Ladengalerie his new book: "Sixty years of Israel - the genesis of a political crisis of Zionism." Moshe Zuckermann is concerned with the genesis of the historical juncture, before the faces of the State of Israel posed today and demanded he give up the decision, which will determine its future existence of most serious: the occupation of the territories occupied in 1967 war, with the risk summon by this act, an Israeli civil war. Or, to maintain the occupation regime and continue to wage a permanent war, with the certainty, and thus a call for Israelis and Palestinians composite bi-national structure of an objective in life. Every decision could bring out one's own reasons, the entire Zionist project to falter.

Can we speak of a free society and continue to rule millions of dispossessed Palestinians? And are the two issues unrelated? Clearly, there are important distinctions between different forms of oppression, and between oppressions under different circumstances, and these differences should not be ignored. And homophobic murders occur in other countries, where political circumstances are very different. Still, the obvious question is whether in a society where shooting at children of the “other” is the norm, we should be surprised that GLBT children become the target of similar violence. Do rallies of the sort held in Tel-Aviv allow not only the cabinet ministers who participated, but also the general public which came to offer its support, to feel enlightened and liberal, while it is in fact indifferent or worse to Israel’s widespread killing of Palestinian youth?

The course will discuss managerial theory and practice, with an emphasis on control mechanisms that developed in the context of the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories. We will examine the historical sources of these mechanisms and attempt to situate them within the colonial context, particularly the British and French. We will then demonstrate how the occupation is reflected, within the spaces of sovereignty it creates, in the administrative practices of law enforcement agencies and
executive authorities. In addition, we will demonstrate how the occupation creates lawless spaces, where people's lives become exposed to violence or the threat thereof.
...The course is a seminar combining theory and practice. In addition to Prof. Shenhav's lectures, Adv.
Michael Sfrad, the legal advisor of "Yesh Din" will accompany the course as a guest lecturer. Every two weeks, the students will take part in Yesh Din's project of observers of military courts, and in Machsom Watch's project of assistance at the District Coordination Offices in the Palestinian territories. Under the direction of these organizations, the students will be involved in documentation, advocacy and coordination while maintaining a journal documenting their activity. The students will be
guided by Adv. Yael Berda, both individually and in groups. Students will receive transportation expenses and a yearly scholarship of NIS 1450.
At the end of the year, each student will submit an article based upon her activities and experiences, with reference to the course's theoretical content. Some of the articles will be collected in a book edited by Prof. Shenhav, Adv. Sfard and Adv. Berda, in cooperation with the organizations.

1) Short descriptions in Hebrew of a course taught by Dr. Ofra Goldstein-Gideoni in Tel Aviv University showing Matan Kaminer as her teaching assistant.
2) Anti-Israel English writings and activities of the refusenik Matan Kaminer.

activist Yael Berda. Village of Bil'in in the West Bank is being
divided by the Israeli security wall; more than half the village will
be absorbed by a neighbouring Jewish settlement. Bil'in has been
successfully leading creative, nonviolent resistance to the Israeli
occupation & theft of its land for 5 years.

Memory of historical events is necessarily collective, but acquires personal characteristics that are of the same nature as individual memory in general. This idea is illustrated through memories of holocaust survivors as they construct themselves in a particular biography of an Israeli child. Holocaust memories are then connected to the ethos of military strength in Israeli society, which ethos undertakes to transform the historical marking of the Jews as victims, sacrificed by the nations on the altar of ethnic power. This is where the Palestinians enter the unconscious Israeli narrative, allowing the movement of the Jew away from the position of the sacrificed. The theme of sacrifice conversion marks itself in historical events such as the Naqba and the recent attack on Gaza. The talk examines the manner in which these themes feed into personal memory systems and reconstructs the workings of memory through the entire historical cycle.

And yet the embarrassment of Jewishness has always made certain Jewish intellectuals not the last, but the first, to seek to discredit the idea of Jewish peoplehood. From the age of the French Revolution, a time at which few European gentiles doubted for a moment that the Jews were a separate people (and on the whole, a heartily disliked one), there were plenty of Jews who insisted that they were really just Frenchmen or Germans or Englishmen of “the Mosaic faith,” with no national ties to other Mosaicists living elsewhere. And by the same token, in the 1940s, when Hitler and his legions were confident that they were exterminating a people and not a mere religious profession, the so-called Canaanite movement, born in the bohemian cafés of Tel Aviv, made similar claims for the Jews of Palestine — who, it was said, were proud, sun-bronzed “Hebrews,” not to be confused with the pale-skinned juifs, Juden and zhidi of Europe then meekly trooping off to the gas chambers.
Shlomo Sand is in this tradition, a post-modernist Canaanite who need not, he thinks, suffer the indignity of belonging to the Jewish people because — what a relief! — no such people exists. No doubt, not a few of the thousands of Israelis who helped put Sand’s book on the best-seller list in Israel experienced a similar epiphany upon reading it. Even in a Jewish state, we now know, there will always be Jews who would rather be something else. You can, to paraphrase an old Zionist witticism, take the Jew out of the non-Jewish environment into which he dreams of assimilating, but you cannot take the assimilationist out of every Jew.
Unfortunately, there are even larger numbers of non-Jews who will be happy to believe Sand’s nonsense. Once upon a time, antisemitism consisted of the belief that the Jews were an incorrigible and pernicious people who could never be absorbed by other peoples. Today, it is trendy to hold that they are a non-people masquerading as a people in order to justify stealing another people’s homeland. Le plus ça change, le plus ça reste le même chose. As discouraging as it is to see Jewish intellectuals like Shlomo Sand aiding and abetting their people’s enemies, this too is not new under the sun.

The key assumptions about Israel and the Jews are indelible. Forced from Jerusalem into exile, the Jews dispersed throughout the world, always remaining attached to their ancient homeland. Psalmists wept when they remembered Zion. A people were sustained by an unflagging determination to return to their native soil. “Next year in Jerusalem!” The triumph of Zionism—the founding of Israel—is the fulfillment of that ancient vow. The Israeli Declaration of Independence states it plainly: “Eretz Yisrael was the birthplace of the Jewish people… After being forcibly exiled from their land, the people remained faithful to it throughout their Dispersion and never ceased to pray and hope for their return to it and for the restoration in it of their political freedom.”
Now suppose that none of it is true.
That’s the thesis of a new book, The Invention of the Jewish People, by Tel Aviv University historian Shlomo Sand, who argues that the Jews were not in fact exiled from Israel, and that the bulk of modern Jewry does not descend from the ancient Israelites Rather, he claims, they are the children of converts—North African Berbers and Turkic Khazars—and have no ancestral ties to the land of Israel. Zionism is not a return home, Sand writes, it is the tragic theft of another people’s land. As such, Israel is not the political rebirth of the Jewish nation—it’s a complete fabrication.

We are a diverse group of Palestinians, solidarity activists, and supporters of human rights and international law. We write to join the Palestinian political parties, civil society groups, trade unions, and citizens that have condemned the recent decision at the UN Human Rights Council to withdraw Palestinian support for a resolution endorsing the report of the "UN Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict," led by Richard Goldstone.
We consider this decision a betrayal of the Palestinian struggle for self-determination and of broader efforts to promote human rights and a just international system.
Although we have no illusions that the Goldstone report would have guaranteed accountability for the atrocities committed in Gaza, we recognize it as an important tool in mobilizing the world community for the cause of peace and justice in the region.

The acts of commemorating 1948, the starting point of this continued Nakba, should also be a time for reflection upon finding a way to finally create its endpoint, in a manner that guarantees dignity, equality, democracy, and security to all Palestinians and all Israelis. The process of asking these questions should also be reversed - instead of beginning by asking how to achieve two states or one state, the question’s starting point should be one of identifying what specific political arrangements are necessary to build and sustain a future in which all Palestinian refugees who wish to return to their homeland will be able to do so, and allow all Israelis and Palestinians to live in equality, dignity, democracy, and not least of all, security. How can we change the current condition under which privileges are granted by the State to Jews living anywhere in historic Palestine (or indeed to any Jew in the world who wishes to emigrate to Israel or the West Bank) over any Palestinian in any place in historic Palestine (or any Palestinian living in exile who wishes to return to their homeland)? Our intellectual and political efforts should take these questions as the point of departure. And it is likely that once we do so, it will become clear that a two state solution in the way it is being discussed in the high echelons of power is incompatible with equality, democracy, return of refugees, and historic reconciliation, and therefore, with long-term stability.

NTNU, a prestigious Norwegian university, is this autumn offering a series of seminars on the Middle East. Seeing as how it’s NTNU one would normally expect only the best. Yet the series of seminars as a whole appears rather unbalanced. Clearly we will hear the Palestinian narrative, but who is there to provide the audience with Israel’s perspective? The fact that Ilan Pappe is jewish is certainly no guarantee....Another is Moshe Zuckermann, who on German radio has claimed that 400 000 people were killed during Cast Lead. Read more here. Notice that although Zuckermann afterwards claimed he had made a mistake, the German radio channel refused to alter the recording.
Fact-based? Aye, one of Norway’s most foremost universities is fact-based all right. So fact-based in fact, they will only examine one side of the story.

These students will certainly ultimately realize that the existence of research universities in Israel depends on those who have money to give them, and thereby also the ability to dictate the subjects of research and the limits of freedom of thought and expression.
Students, you are our future, and I have a modest proposal for you: Stay in the ivory tower. Try not to see reality as it is. And certainly do not describe it with pejorative words like "apartheid" or try to change it. Try to understand, in practical terms, what is worth studying and what you are better off not publishing, since your future depends mainly on the degree of flexibility you can display and on your ability to toe the line. Above all, you must remember that to adapt is to survive. See the Carmi case.

Several days ago Dr. Neve Gordon of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev published an opinion piece in the Los Angeles Times. In that article he explained why, after years of activity in the peace camp here, he has decided to pin his hopes on applying external pressure on Israel - including sanctions, divestment and an economic, cultural and academic boycott.
He believes, and so do I, that only when the Israeli society's well-heeled strata pay a real price for the continuous occupation will they finally take genuine steps to put an end to it.
Gordon looks at the Israeli society and sees an apartheid state. While the Palestinians' living conditions deteriorate, many Israelis are benefiting from the occupation. In between the two sides, Israeli society is sinking into complete denial - drawn into extreme hatred and violence.

Today, to speak about an Occupation is no longer adequate, because the domination of a whole people devoid of rights over such a long period (a period that is now longer than the time passed from the Balfour declaration to the establishment of Israel) has created a new regime in Israel-Palestine, a Jewish form of apartheid. It is not that Israel is a democracy with a certain problem called the West Bank and Gaza: it is rather the case that the Israeli apartheid regime contains a Jewish-democratic enclave.
One cannot simply put an end to this situation with a series of political decisions. The entire regime must be deconstructed.

The reason why the Livnat Family´s AHAVA and other Israeli companies choose to hold their factories in the Occupied territories and not in Israel proper, says Merav Amir of Who Profits? Is because of government incentives.
AMIR, MERAV WHO PROFITS: There is a considerable reduction in real estate prices when you move to the Territories, most of the area in the West Bank is considered, “Priority Area A” which means there are very significant tax reductions there and different benefits they get from the government. They get a significant tax reduction, for the employees and the businesses themselves. Although businesses in the West Bank were supposed to pay taxes, they were never collected. In 2002 there was a report by the internal critic of the government and in the report they exposed that the tax revenues weren’t collected in the West Bank, but now they have to. The third thing that makes opening in the West Bank very attractive is that although there are different kinds of regulations, such as environmental regulations, there is very lax implementation of these regulations. Many times businesses move to the West Bank because they won’t get objections from their neighbors because if you are in an area which is populated by Palestinians, they have no say about who can open a business around their houses. An additional incentive for many businesses is having access to very cheap labor by the Palestinians.

According to Tel Aviv University Prof. Rachel Giora, a member of the group, the organization is also encouraging Israelis to boycott Madonna's performance, "to let Israel's government know how they feel... thereby hoping to encourage the Israeli government to reconsider its policies."
"A performance here would imply that Israel is behaving in an acceptable manner, and would be interpreted by Israelis as moral support for the illegal and inhumane policies, described by many as war crimes and crimes against humanity," Giora said in the letter.

Wesley discussed two images of Zionist discourse: Arab territorial threat and Arab traditionalism.
In the first example, he explained, Zionists feared the expansion of Arab towns due to population growth. In the upper Galilee, Israel expropriated Arab land to establish Jewish centers that would drive a wedge between Arab communities.
Using tradition as an excuse, Zionists said Arab residents of Nazareth should rely on tourism, whereas the new Jewish communities needed more government funds to develop high tech industrial parks.

Tel Aviv University (TAU) is Israel’s largest university. Like any large university, TAU hosts an extensive range of well regarded research and teaching programmes in almost every discipline. Unlike most large universities, TAU is also heavily and openly involved in military research and development (R&D), deeming the pursuit of state security prerogatives and academic research to be harmonious enterprises at the centre of its institutional mission. The following pages offer a brief and necessarily incomplete description of just some of the current work being
conducted in the dozens of TAU departments presently collaborating with the military. Nothing is said here of the
many professional links between TAU’s senior management and the army; nothing is said of the university’s discriminatory housing, scholarship, and access practices privileging demobilized Jewish soldiers over Palestinian citizens; nothing is said of TAU’s discriminatory mission of serving first not the citizens of the state but of being rather a definitionally ‘Jewish university’; and nothing is said of the university’s historic role in illegally transforming depopulated post 1948 Palestinian land into a state resource. While these are all necessary components in arriving at an understanding of the full extent of TAU’s deep involvement in the pursuit of exclusivist and violent nationalist goals, space prevents their being treated fully here. Instead, this document examines only the most direct and immediate aspects of TAU’s instrumental contributions to the state’s ongoing
military projects; it highlights the explicit institutional culpability of TAU in the design and execution of war crimes and in the subjugation of a people. This is, remarkably, an aspect of TAU’s investment in nationalist projects which has received too little attention and yet which most vividly reveals the human consequences of international acquiescence in the militarization of academic institutions in Israel. What follows then is a brief survey of the types of institution and programme which are currently bringing together scholars and soldiers in the laboratories, clean rooms, and classrooms of one of Israel’s premier security research establishments – Tel Aviv University.

Further, the Israeli army used heavy artillery and white phosphorus munitions in densely populated areas of Gaza, against the UNRWA's headquarters and a UN school in Beit Lahiya. As reported by Judge Goldstone, Gazans trying to relay their civilian status were also hit. Even though the Israeli military tried several times to deny its use, the Human Rights Watch (HRW) report on white phosphorous use in Gaza quotes an unnamed Israeli official: "at least one month before [white phosphorus] was used a legal team had been consulted on the implications." HRW found that "in violation of the laws of war, the [Israeli army] generally failed to take all feasible precautions to minimize civilian harm" and "used white phosphorus in an indiscriminate manner causing civilian death and injury."
Such reckless disregard for the lives of civilians and pathological cover-ups of military operations are recognized by many Israelis within the system itself. According to one Israeli jurist speaking to the Israeli daily Haaretz, the ILD is considered "more militant than any other legal agency in Israel, and willing to adopt the most flexible interpretations of the law in order to justify the [Israel army's] actions." Although the ILD personnel "are now very proud of their influence upon the combat" in Gaza, human rights groups have stated that "residents weren't advised then as to which places were safe, and the roads by which they fled were bombed and turned into death traps."

The attack on Israel’s Palestinian minority has deep ideological roots in extreme nationalistic purism, but it is mainly politically motivated. The Israeli Arabs, despite six decades of discrimination, have been an incredibly loyal minority. The Israeli right-wing clearly wishes to put an end to this loyalty, hoping the incitement will lead Israeli Arabs to some form of violent resistance, from street violence to terror attacks. This would create the desired atmosphere of suspicion, fear, and hatred that fascism always needs in order to flourish. An Arab-Israeli Intifada is the wet dream of many Israeli right-wingers: nationally and internationally, it would enable them to present Israel once again as a threatened victim of Arab/Muslim/Gentile persecution, not as the rogue colonialist regional power it actually is.

In its current approach, Israel is not only violating international law and shirking its obligations to the U.S. administration under the road map. One cannot fully understand the "natural growth" of settlements without realizing the impact it has on the Palestinian villages that are its victims. To allow for such expansion, Israel forcefully and effectively limits Palestinian development in the West Bank. This is achieved by treating the whole of Area C - the 60 percent of the West Bank defined by the Oslo Accords as coming under full Israeli jurisdiction - as reserved
for Israeli purposes exclusively. In particular, Israel employs several complementary policies in Area C.
First, in addition to the 30 percent of the West Bank Israel has defined as "state land," it has declared an additional 10 percent "survey lands," on which Palestinian development is prohibited.
Second, even in areas under partial Palestinian control, Israel severely restricts Palestinian construction and engages in aggressive demolition of houses. Over the past few years, the Civil Administration has, on a monthly average, issued 60 demolition orders, demolished 20 structures, and has
granted one permit for construction. And because the Civil Administration refuses to prepare master plans that meet the needs of the population, Palestinians have no choice but to meet their "natural growth" by engaging in illegal construction.
Third, Israel continues to build roads that allow limited or no Palestinian use. The separation barrier and other security measures implemented at the behest of the settler population have the additional effect of severely restricting Palestinians' access to their lands.
Israel would be wise not to continue to obfuscate the reality that is becoming increasingly clear with every passing day. If it continues its current practices and rhetoric, it will suffer the fate of double punishment familiar to quite a few politicians: first for its acts, and
then again for deceit

The perverse relationship between Israelis and Palestinians is a depressing B movie that the entire world daily watches. Many actors, spectators, and producers take part in the Mis-en-Scene: soldiers, civilians, international observes, humanitarian organizations, to name few. Despite the attraction to the action, not many realize that the Israeli occupation is all about the body: sweat, heavy breathing, desire. There are several principles to the erotics of the occupation, such as stripping and searching.
The Israeli authorities look for war in your handbag. They ask for your identification papers. They strip and search you with a metal detector, and put you through a screening machine. If they say hello to you, at the entrance to a bus station, for instance, they just check your accent. Airport interrogations may take hours and they are all about intimate knowledge. The Israeli authorities want to know who did you come to visit, and where do you work, and where do you sleep, and with whom, and what are you looking for in wherever it is you are going to. National security is obsessed with inspecting, identifying, examining, searching and stripping the body.

A logical conclusion of Zand's work exposing Israel's founding mythology may be the restoration of the idea of a one-state solution to a legitimate place in the debate over this contentious region. After all, while it muddies the waters in one sense -- raising ancient, biblical questions about just who the "children of Israel" really are -- in another sense, it hints at the commonalities that exist between Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs. Both groups lay claim to the same crust of earth, both have faced historic repression and displacement and both hold dear the idea that they should have a "right of return."
And if both groups in fact share common biblical ties, then it begs the question of why the entirety of what was Palestine under the British mandate should remain a refuge for people of one religion instead of being a country in which Jews and Arabs are guaranteed equal protection -- equal protection under the laws of a state whose legitimacy would never again be open to question.

Riva Bachrach of Machson Watch opened the conference by praising the women who took photos of the violent, aggressive IDF soldiers manning the checkpoints to expose their acts of humiliating the Palestinians. She continued that her work was to make Israeli society aware of the negative psychological effects on Arabs and on Israeli soldiers because of their service in the occupied territories. She said that Israelis do not want contact with the territories. She also praised “Atrocities of Occupation” a collection of photos Israeli soldiers took in June 2004 of IDF violence in Hebron and claimed that their service caused them to become hostile. She claimed that occupation is jeopardizing the rights of the occupied and affecting the values of he occupier and that Israel ignores the Arab’s suffering. Her stated goal was to create a dialogue to discuss differences of opinions.
My comments: Bachrach set the tone for the conference. It was to be an emotional exercise, based primarily on old and previous publicized information, to demonize the Israeli soldier serving in Yosh and express sympathy for and indentification with the poor, oppressed Arab who is so mistreated and misunderstood by many Israel soldiers and the terrible, violent settlers. The amount of information regarding the treatment for IDF soldiers experience PTS or other mental problems relating from his service was almost nil. In addition ‘push button’ labels, i.e. occupation, settler was used.

For over half an hour slogans were chanted and speeches made against the separation wall and in favour of Palestinian freedom. After absorbing a dangerous overdose of Palestinian sun the demonstration dispersed without conflicts.

What that description does not say is how Neta Ziv seems to feel human and civil rights do not apply to Jewish Israelis, only to Arabs, and particularly those ones with a desire to dispossess the Jews in Israel of the same property rights they like to constantly claim they are denied. To Neta Ziv, Jewish Israelis are the majority “oppressing” the Arab minority (there’s that old “social justice” mantra again). While it’s true there are more Jews in Israel behind the green line and in the territories than Arabs, the entire Arab and Muslim world that calls for the end of Israel’s existence numbers 250 million to Israel’s 4 million Jews. A case in point is the legal precedent set in the case of an Israeli Arab named Qa’ adan who wanted to reside in a community set aside by the Jewish agency for the settlement of Jews in Israel that was handled by Professor Ziv’s cronies in the ACRI. It was argued that Qa’adan, an Israeli Arab citizen, was denied equal rights because he wanted a home in an exclusive Jewish community that was set aside for Jewish settlement. ACRI and its intellectual acolytes in the judiciary ruled that Qa’adan had the right to live there too. Whereas some would call the establishment of a neighborhood for Jews in a region where Jews have been murdered for two millennia might be considered Jewish “affirmative action” (social justice types in America love “affirmative action”), Professor Ziv considers it a denial of human and equal rights. Money talks when it comes to leasing land in Israel, so why didn’t Qa’adan ask some of his Arab oil brothers to do some affirmative action for him and other Israeli Arabs by providing enough money to buy property? After all, they spend untold amounts of money to pay for weapons to kill Jews.

This characterises this present stage of archaeology here in Silwan, which is archaeology behind fences and it seems they want to keep things under wraps, to prevent people from peering in," says Raphael Greenberg, an archaeologist from Tel Aviv University.
"I can't get into any of these sites. I'm barred from visiting them. It seems that the Antiquities Authority doesn't want criticism of their work."
One reason why the Antiquities Authority may be sensitive is because it has handed over some of the sites to El Ad, a private, right-wing organisation run by Israeli settlers.
So it is the settlers who collect the entrance fees and it is the settlers who put their spin on what is displayed inside.

Benvenisti, a most esteemed professor of international law, uses the most astute legal arguments to assure us that the Arabs could not possibly intend for the Palestinian refugees to return to Israel, since that would be contrary to international law and to the provisions of General Assembly Resolution 194 as he interprets them.

I am speaking about the price paid by the Palestinians not only for the patently unjust elements of Zionism (the expulsion of 1948, the inequality between Jews and Arabs in Israel and the ongoing torment of Palestinians in the form of the settlements); I am speaking about the price paid for its just elements: the establishment of a Jewish state in the Land of Israel.
The Zionist movement based its justification of the aspiration to establish such a state on the right of every nation to self-determination, on the Jews' historical connection to the land of Israel and, as the tipping point, the persecution of the Jews in the 19th and 20th centuries. It is clear from the components of this justification that it was not the Palestinians who should have paid the full price for the realization of this aspiration.

Israeli society imposes on its soldiers serving in the army the role of control over another nation - the Palestinian people living in the Territories; these soldiers serve as the almost exclusive contact between Israeli society and Palestinian society. In this conference we will examine the psychological influences of the army service in the occupied territories, both on the soldiers themselves and on the Jewish society in Israel, that avoids direct contact with the Palestinians in the Territories, but sends and receives back its sons and daughters in their army service there. We will examine how open these influences are and how they are spoken about in our society, army, and mental health personnel.
Convention and Registration
09:00-09:30 Greetings on behalf of Tami Shteinmetz Center: Ephraim Lavi
Machsom Watch: Reva Bachrach - psychoactive.
09:30-11:30 First Session: Witnesses.
Reva Bachrach - Machsom Watch Chairman – psychoactive: Barrier - salt of the earth? Soldiers' atrocities in the Intifada: Perspectives from the soldier, the company, the army and society.
Yoel Elitzur - Hebrew University: "To See if I'm Smiling" segments from Tamar Yarom's film.
Tal Ben Sira-Morag - one of the film's participants.
The cruelty of Givati, and Liberal Morals

The refusal of honest, open, and political people such as Tzoref and Paz to include the Palestinian prisoners who are citizens of Israel among the Palestinian prisoners who are subjects of the occupation troubles me; but not because it undermines the imaginary peace process. It troubles me because it exposes another facet, a very painful facet, of Zionism. I have no doubt that these two people support fair and non-discriminatory treatment of "security" prisoners who are citizens of Israel: individual treatment, as is customary in the case of criminal prisoners. After all, excluding the occupation, it is a democratic and properly administered state! It is precisely this view of the democratic and civilized nature of Israel that exposes the complete blindness with regard to the fear and patronizing arrogance that are so fundamental to Zionism and which underlie the refusal to recognize the Palestinianness of the prisoners we are discussing. The required re-evaluation of Palestinian prisoners who are citizens of Israel is much more radical than that which is cited in the letter of the prisoners to the IPS commissioner. It is no wonder that their letter received no attention. The State of Israel is incapable, at this stage, of relating to them as citizens with equal rights or as members of the Palestinian people, just as it is unable to regard all of its Arab citizens in these ways.

The Israeli Indymedia website is facing an investigation after publishing a soldier's picture and accusing him of murder. Deputy State Prosecutor Shai Nitzan has asked police to probe the incident.
Nitzan said the site may be guilty of slandering a public official.
The affair began when Indymedia put up a picture of a soldier under the caption “Murderer.” A subheading accused the soldier in the photograph of killing a Palestinian Authority Arab man, Basam Abu-Rahma, on Friday, April 17.
... Police to probe Dr. Anat Matar of Tel Aviv University as well. Matar denied creating the image in question, but admitted to posting the picture on an email list.

A message to BRICUP’s pre UCU Congress 2009 meeting from Rachel Giora,
Professor of Linguistics at Tel Aviv University
Tel Aviv
20.5.2009
Dear Colleagues,
I am writing to express my support of your actions toward helping the boycott movement become engulfing and effective. By responding to the Palestinian call to boycott Israel, you emerged as the pioneers of the boycott movement against
Israel and I hope you will be able to witness its impact on redressing injustices and on changing the face of the world.
Thanks to you, the boycott movement against Israel is now gaining force.

Omar Barghouti: We don't have to prove that Israel is identical to apartheid South Africa in order to [justify] the label "apartheid." Apartheid is a generalized crime according to United Nations conventions and there are certain criteria that may or may not apply to any specific situation -- so we judge a situation on its own merits and whether or not it fulfills those conditions of being called an apartheid state. According to the basic conventions of the UN defining the crime of apartheid, Israel satisfies almost all the conditions to be granted the label of apartheid. Other than the clear racial separation in the occupied West Bank between Jews and non-Jews (indigenous Palestinians) -- separate roads, separate housing, separate everything -- apartheid is also alive and well inside Israel despite appearances [to the contrary]. Unlike South Africa, Israel is more sophisticated; it's an evolved form of apartheid. South African apartheid was rudimentary, primitive, so to speak -- black, white, clear separation, no rights ... The Palestinian citizens of Israel (the indigenous population) have the right to vote, which is a huge difference from South Africa. However, in every other vital domain, they are discriminated against by law, not only by policy. Therefore, it is legalized and institutionalized racism and that's what makes it apartheid

Dr. Anat Matar, senior lecturer, philosophy, publicized a soldier's picture, claiming he killed Bassam Abu Rachma in Bilin, and asked viewers to identify him. Matar: "I regret having sent the mail since I'm not sure the specific soldier was the killer".
Dr. Matar, a senior lecturer in philosophy at Tel Aviv University, subsequently decided that her impression was like the determination of a judge at the end of a trial.
Matar publicized mailings containing a large picture of an IDF soldier - whose face is exposed - called him a murderer, and asked the viewers to provide details about him.

As Jews, Palestinians, Israeli citizens who are horrified by the
inhuman, immoral, and unlawful actions of the Israeli government
towards the Palestinians, we urge you to cancel the twinning agreement between Barcelona and Tel Aviv
Keeping up the business as usual charade will only encourage Israel to proceed with its illegal, atrocious, and unjust practices that have been going on for the past 42 years

In accordance with the Palestinian call to sanction Israel until it ends the occupation, sieges and apartheid, dismantles the separation wall and allows the return and compensation of dispossessed Palestinians, we further uphold that Israel should have been banned from participating in this conference from the outset.

The soldier in the picture had murdered Abdallah Abu Rahma by direct shooting of a gas canister in Bilin on April 17.
The Israeli army allows him to avoid responsibility.
Do you know his name or any other details? know anyone else that had commited a crime in Palestine?

The exhibition is curated by Lieven De Cauter and coordinated
by Iwan Strauven. Participating architects: Senan AbdelKader,
Nasser Abourahme, Nora Akawi, Yazid Anani, Saleh
Hijazi, Rana Shakaa, Omar Yusuf.
This article is a reflection on the project Decolonizing
Architecture directed by Hilal, Petti and Weizman and
concerned with the potential future transformation of Israeli
Colonies and Military Bases. The project is sponsored and produced by Eloisa Haudenschild and Steve Fagin
partners in spareParts, a division of the haudenschild- Garage.

About 10 internationals and 15 Israelis joined several dozens of Palestinians for the weekly demo in Bil'in, which marked the 61st memorial day of the Nakba - the expulsion of Palestinians from Israel during israel's war of independence. The demonstrators carried an oversized cardboard key as a figure for the keys of the homes left behind, which many Palestinians still hold on to, and which symbolize the Palestinian right of return.

The anti-boycott lobby will now jump to use this as a weapon in their increasingly desperate attempts to fend off the growing threat of academic boycott of Israeli academic institutions, arguing that these institutions respect the academic freedom "even" of boycott advocates.
Other than the evident trivialization of academic freedom implied in such a claim (ignoring all the arguments about suppression of real academic freedom in doing academic work on "problematic" topics, as Oren Ben-Dor, Ilan Pappe, Tanya Reinhart and many others have argued), it misses the point completely on why PACBI, BRICUP, USACBI, among many other small academic boycott groups in France, Spain, Belgium, Norway, Australia, South Africa, etc., have called for a boycott of Israeli academic institutions. The well documented complicity of Israel's academic institutions in the state's colonial and racist policies remains THE main factor standing behind the boycott call. Whether TAU expels me or not, this compelling factor remains true. Expelling me would have added just a bit more fuel to an already blazing fire!

Constituting Violence 1947-1950
A visual genealogy of a regime “and a catastrophe from their point of view”
Research and Curating: Ariella Azoulay
Research Assistance and Curating: Hadas Snir
Exhibition Design: Michael Gordon
Fourth Meeting: Creating a Jewish political body and deporting the country’s Arab residents
For the coming international Nakba Day Zochrot is organizing a tourist bus in Tel Aviv to visit the Palestinian villages in the city up to 1948. Meeting point at 3:00 pm at Manshiyyah, by The Irgun Museum. From ther we'll travel to Salama and meet by the mosque of the village at 4:30. From there we'll travel to the center of Tel Aviv and pass by Summayl, Jammasin al-Gharbi and Shaykh Muwannis. We'll end the tour at the cemetery at Haa'tzmaut (the independence) garden, next to Hilton hotel at 6:15. Ending time around 7:00 pm.

We are Jews, Palestinians, Israeli citizens who aspire to live in peace, are disturbed by our government's attempts to bully European states into silent complicity with its utterly unacceptable and illegal conduct. The latest attempt by the Israeli government to cynically silence criticism from the EU is in opposition to democratic principles, from freedom of speech to standards of international relations.
We applaud the European Parliament and the European commission who have taken steps to freeze the upgrade of the trade agreements with Israel since the criminal Israeli assault on Gaza. This course of action is the only one consistent with the admirable principles on which the European Community was set up.
Considering the deteriorating state of the rule of law in Israel, the growing disenfranchisement of many Israelis - who after years of conflict are quickly and dangerously losing faith in their country's democratic institutions - we feel that the greatest danger facing Israel today is the specter of impunity. If allowed to continue our state's policies of ongoing war crimes against the Palestinian people, including the murderous siege of the Palestinian population of Gaza, the on-going home demolitions in occupied East Jerusalem and the settlement expansion through out the west bank will kill any chance for peace.

The impressive growth of the Palestinian civil society campaign for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel, particularly after its criminal war of aggression on the occupied Gaza Strip, is testimony to the morality and consistency of ordinary citizens and civil society organizations around the world concerned about restoring Palestinian rights and achieving justice for Palestinians.
The most recent achievement of the Israel boycott movement was the adoption of BDS-- nearly by consensus -- by the Scottish Trade Union Congress, following the example set by the Congress of South African Trade Unions, COSATU and the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, ICTU.
In despair over their evident inability to stop or even hold back the growing tide of BDS across the globe, Israel apologists have resorted to an old tactic at which they seem to excel: witch hunts and smear campaigns. A self-styled McCarthyist academic monitor group in Israel has launched a petition calling for the expulsion of Omar Barghouti, a founding member of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), from Tel Aviv University, where he is enrolled as a doctoral student. The Israeli campaign urges the university administration to expel Barghouti due to his leading role in the BDS movement that calls for boycotting Israel and all institutions complicit in its occupation and apartheid
To date, more than 65,000 persons have reportedly signed this right-wing Israeli petition that depicts Barghouti as an “especially strident and persuasive voice” against Israeli colonial and racist policies. Several media columns by Zionist journalists in Israel and the United Kingdom, among others, have tried to use the “revelation” that Barghouti, “now enrolled” at an Israeli university, is politically inconsistent for calling for the boycott of all Israeli academic institutions while he is a student at one of them. Other than the clear dishonesty and underhandedness of these same media in presenting the case as if Barghouti has just -- or recently -- enrolled in an Israeli university despite themselves having reported years ago that he was already enrolled then, the reports have made some glaring omissions about the Israeli apartheid context, the widely endorsed criteria of the PACBI boycott, and the system of racial discrimination in Israel’s educational system against the indigenous Palestinians.

In response, therefore, to the petition calling for the expulsion of Mr. Barghouti that will be submitted to us in the near future, the University cannot and will not expel this student based on his political views or actions. He will be assessed only on the basis of
his academic achievements and excellence.

Dear Reader,
It is confirmed Omar Barghouti is a Master's student at Tel Aviv University and not PhD.
Our Hebrew petition against Barghouti has reached over 65,000
and our English petition has reached over 800
IAM is scheduled to deliver hard copy of the petitions to Danny Leviathan the Tel Aviv University Rector in May 10.

Omar Barghouti is an activist and writer based in Palestine. He was one of the early advocates of a Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions strategy against Israel's occupation and apartheid policies. He was one of the headline speakers of Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) 2009.

Between 1947 and 1950, the institutions of the Jewish Yishuv were transformed into the apparatus of a Jewish state. They were tasked with Judaizing the region they had conquered. They applied their logic to all areas of life in a territory which still had no permanent borders. The exhibition follows this process through some two hundred photographs, most of which come from various Yishuv and state archives. The apparatus of the new state was shaped during the process of destroying Palestinian society by killing, dividing, expropriating, expelling and preventing those expelled from returning. Nor was that enough. In order for this apparatus to be stabilized and maintained, it was necessary to transform the catastrophe imposed on the Palestinians into what I shall characterize as “catastrophe from their point of view” – “their,” of course, referring to the Palestinians.

The crimes of 1948 are not a finished chapter in the history books, but an ongoing reality that has been unfolding for at least 60 years and continues to unfold today: ongoing theft and expropriation of the remaining Palestinian land and water, demolition of thousands of homes, the making of the Gaza strip and Palestinian cities in the West Bank and Gaza strip into concentration camps surrounded by an eight-meter-high cement wall and electrical fences, inside which reign unemployment, poverty, and hunger and despair, in addition to the mass incarceration of three generations of Palestinians (currently above 12,000). On the flip side of the steady decimation of the indigenous Palestinian people, Israel, with U.S. and European support, imported to Palestine one million immigrants, mostly Europeans, during the nineties. Land theft and colonization were carried out under a fake discourse of peace, promoted by a fake Israeli peace movement and NGOs financed by U.S. and E.U., using the Oslo agreements as tools for the complete elimination of Palestine from the map.

Professor Shlomo Sand, the Tel Aviv University history professor and author of a controversial book on the genetic origins of the Jews, this week received a top critics prize from French journalists. Sand, whose book "When and How Was the Jewish People Invented?" ignited controversy in Israel and in Jewish circles, is the recipient of the Aujourd'hui Award, which is given to the best non-fiction political or historical work.
The book, which was published by the Resling imprint, spent 19 weeks on the bestseller list in Israel. Though it has been in bookstores for just six months in France, it has thus far sold 25,000 copies, good enough to remain on the bestseller list.

Out of a sense of shared responsibility and in the spirit of Jewish tradition - because the occupation is destroying the lives of the occupied and the souls of the occupiers.
Appeal to the Israeli government:
We the undersigned Jews want the Israeli occupation, settlements and blockade of Palestinian territories to come to an end. We call for humane living conditions and security for all the people in Israel and Palestine.

This collection of essays by leading Israeli and Palestinian scholars, The power of Inclusive Exclusion, accompanied by a comprehensive chronology, photographs and documents, is a groundbreaking attempt to analyze the Israeli occupation as a rationalized system of political rule. It features a comprehensive range of inquiries that address some of the fundamental dimensions of the occupation regime in its current phase – the unpredictable bureaucratic apparatus, the fragmentation of space and regulation of movement, the intricate tapestry of law and regulations, the discriminatory control over economic flows and the calculated use of military violence. Employing a variety of disciplinary and intellectual perspectives, the essays in the volume go beyond prevalent views of the occupation as either a skewed form of brutal colonization, a form of "Jewish Apartheid" or an inevitable piecemeal and improvised response to "terrorism". Pretending neither to blur Israel's responsibility for the Palestinian predicament nor to portray the occupation as a premeditated and coherent project, the essays uncover the structural logic that sustains and reproduces the occupation regime and thus delineate the stakes for an informed opposition to it.

The Israel – Palestine Conflict: The Case of the War on Gaza - where do the legalities lie?
Date: 1 March 2009
Venue: Brunei Gallery
13.30-15.00
Panel III on Humanitarian Law Issues (jus in bello)
This would examine issues in relation to the conduct of the conflict.
Chair: Dr Rosemary Hollis (City)
Panel members: Prof Françoise Hampson (Essex), Prof Steven Haines (Geneva Centre for Security Policy, by telephone),
Dr Aeyal Gross (Tel Aviv University)
...an academic centre at SOAS, the Sir Joseph Hotung Programme in Law, Human Rights and Peace Building in the Middle East, appears to lack balance in its coverage of Israeli-Palestinian issues. In October 2004, they cosponsored, along with the SOAS Palestine Society and others, a memorial conference for the Palestinian intellectual Edward Said titled "A Continuing Legacy." In November 2004, they invited the Palestinian advocate Dr. Hanan Ashrawi to present the annual Hotung Lecture.
In January 2005, following the International Court of Justice's (ICJ) ruling against Israel's security barrier, Prof. Iain Scobbie, head of the Hotung Programme, spoke at three different events at SOAS regarding the alleged illegality of the barrier. One of these events at which Scobbie lectured, along with Arab Member of Knesset and fierce critic of Israeli policy Dr. Azmi Bishara and others, was held at the Brunei Gallery Lecture Theatre, the largest venue on the SOAS campus. The overall event was titled "Sealing Their Fate: The Wall's Implications for Palestinian life" and was presented by the Friends of Birzeit University, the SOAS Palestine Society, and the London Middle East Institute at SOAS.

Many Israelis do not want to acknowledge or recognise their own misdeeds or atrocities, says Bar-Tal. "They prefer not to admit facts that put them in a negative light. Therefore the collective memory becomes a black-and-white story, made up to glorify their own side and to blame and de-legitimise the other side."

Israel's destructive criminal policy will not cease without a massive intervention by the international community. However, except for some rather weak official condemnation, the international community is reluctant to intervene,. The United States openly supports the Israeli violence and Europe, although voicing some condemnation, is unwilling to seriously consider withdrawing the “gift” it handed Israel by upgrading its relations with the European Union.
In the past the world knew how to fight criminal policies. The boycott on South Africa was effective, but Israel is handled with kid gloves: its trade relations are flourishing, academic and cultural cooperation continue and intensify with diplomatic support. ...
Sincerely,
The Undersigned
175. Judd Ne'eman [Department of Film and Television at Tel-Aviv University]

Literally thousands of people all over the world are working very hard to demonize and delegitimize Israel. An especially strident and persuasive voice is that of Omar Barghouti, whose devastating accusations against Israel can be found on dozens of internet sites, newspapers all over the world and even at international conferences. What makes his work especially repugnant is his wide use of half-truth, selective omission and outright lie. He is clearly an enemy of Israel.
We recently learned that he is a doctoral student at the Tel Aviv University. If this is indeed true, it is quite incredible because Omar Barghouti is a founding member of The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel and has personally called on countless occasions, for an international boycott of all Israeli universities as well as trade and cultural ties.

My second story is the story of the refugees, or, to be more precise, the story of the board’s discussion on addressing the refugee problem. The debate was not about the
right of return per se – yes or no – but rather about the question of
B’Tselem’s obligation to investigate and report on the question of
refugees. This was a question posed, in general, to any human rights organization and in particular to an Israeli human rights organization such as B’Tselem; it was, and is, a loaded question having to do with a political agenda. It was, and is, a complex question needing sensitive answers. Leon’s words at that board meeting were so typical of him:
“…This is really one of the most embarrassing subjects because it may harm the political process. Let me remind us all that one of the arguments aired [at our previous meeting] was the political situation and its relationship to the human rights aspect of the problem.” Leon continued, emphasizing the ambivalence in us all, the gap between the moral and the pragmatic:
“Each of us here is acting on two levels – the level of politics and
the level of human rights…There are expulsions all over the word, but the injustice cannot be ignored. I think this is the type of work that B’Tselem can and is capable of doing.” His final, “decisive”,
words were so Leon-like: “To say that we won’t touch the issue because it is politically sensitive – that doesn’t seem right to me.”

The psychological analysis of the situation illustrates the selective,
biasing and distorting transmission and dissemination of information by the Israeli channels of communication. It does not mean that the alternative information does not exist in Israel but very few are interested in knowing what is really happening. Thus, most of the Israeli Jews do not know what Israel perpetrated through the decades of occupying Gaza; most of the
Israeli Jews do not know that originally Hamas was founded by the Israeli authorities to provide an alternative to the national movement of PLO; most of the Israeli Jews do not know that Hamas is a religious–fundamental movement that also provides welfare, health and educational services to the Palestinian people; most of the Israeli Jews do not know that Hamas was elected democratically (with the insistence of USA) to lead the government of the Palestinian authority because of Fatah corruption, and mostly because of the fruitless negotiations with Israel which did not provide any political solution of the conflict; most of the Israeli Jews do not know that the policy of the Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon about ‘No Palestinian Partner’ led to unilateral disengagement from Gaza without negotiation with the Palestinian Authority. This act was done in order to delegitimize Palestinian Authority and in attempt to keep control over the
West Bank. Moreover, the disengagement did not free Gaza but turned it into one big prison. Israel controls the entrances to Gaza and controls every aspect of human life in Gaza.

Hampshire College in Amherst, MA, has become the first of any college or university in the U.S. to divest from companies on the grounds of their involvement in the Israeli occupation of Palestine.
This landmark move is a direct result of a two-year intensive campaign by the campus group, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). The group pressured Hampshire College's Board of Trustees to divest from six specific companies due to human rights concerns in occupied Palestine. Over 800 students, professors, and alumni have signed SJP's "institutional statement" calling for the divestment.
The proposal put forth by SJP was approved on Saturday, 7 Feb 2009 by the Board. By divesting from these companies, SJP believes that Hampshire has distanced itself from complicity in the illegal occupation and war crimes of Israel.
Support From:
--Tarun J. Tejpal, Internationally Acclaimed Author, Editor of the Magazine Tehelka
--Adam Keller
--Beate Zilversmidt
--Hava Kelleradam, Members of Gush Shalom, (‘Peace Block’)
--Anat Biletski, Tel Aviv University
--Anat Matar, Tel Aviv University

When I read and hear all the lies that are thrown and heaped on the Jewish people and their country, the State of Israel, by the Fascist Left with its Israeli Fifth Column – comprised by many academicians beside other “good souls” among us, and the inhuman Communist Biletzki among them – in the lead, I am not surprised.

A new study of Jewish Israelis shows that most accept the 'official version' of the history of the conflict with the Palestinians. Is it any wonder, then, that the same public also buys the establishment explanation of the operation in Gaza?
A pioneering research study dealing with Israeli Jews' memory of the conflict with the Arabs, from its inception to the present, came into the world together with the war in Gaza. The sweeping support for Operation Cast Lead confirmed the main diagnosis that arises from the study, conducted by Daniel Bar-Tal, one of the world's leading political psychologists, and Rafi Nets-Zehngut, a doctoral student: Israeli Jews' consciousness is characterized by a sense of victimization, a siege mentality, blind patriotism, belligerence, self-righteousness, dehumanization of the Palestinians and insensitivity to their suffering. The fighting in Gaza dashed the little hope Bar-Tal had left - that this public would exchange the drums of war for the cooing of doves.
"Most of the nation retains a simplistic collective memory of the conflict, a black-and-white memory that portrays us in a very positive light and the Arabs in a very negative one," says the professor from Tel Aviv University. This memory, along with the ethos of the conflict and collective emotions such as fear, hatred and anger, turns into a psycho-social infrastructure of the kind experienced by nations that have been involved in a long-term violent conflict. This infrastructure gives rise to the culture of conflict in which we and the Palestinians are deeply immersed, fanning the flames and preventing progress toward peace. Bar-Tal claims that in such a situation, it is hard even to imagine a possibility that the two nations will be capable of overcoming the psychological obstacles without outside help.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Sunday responded to opposition to the appointment by Tel Aviv University of an Israel Defense Forces Colonel Pnina Sharvit-Baruch to its law faculty, saying Israel will no longer support institutions that discriminate against IDF officers because of their military service.
"In my opinion, any university that takes part in the disqualification of lecturers on such grounds before an examination [of their service] has finished, will be an institution not suitable for funding from the Israeli government."
Olmert dismissed the protestors who opposed her appointment as "a number of self-righteous, sanctimonious, arrogant hypocrites that chose to make an exception out of the military service of the IDF Advocacy General without determining if she is guilty [of crimes]."

A logical conclusion of Zand's work exposing Israel's founding mythology may be the restoration of the idea of a one-state solution to a legitimate place in the debate over this contentious region. After all, while it muddies the waters in one sense -- raising ancient, biblical questions about just who the "children of Israel" really are -- in another sense, it hints at the commonalities that exist between Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs. Both groups lay claim to the same crust of earth, both have faced historic repression and displacement and both hold dear the idea that they should have a "right of return."
And if both groups in fact share common biblical ties, then it begs the question of why the entirety of what was Palestine under the British mandate should remain a refuge for people of one religion instead of being a country in which Jews and Arabs are guaranteed equal protection -- equal protection under the laws of a state whose legitimacy would never again be open to question.

Leading the protest against Sharvit-Baruch's appointment is Professor Chaim Ganz of the university's Minerva Center for Human Rights.
Ganz wrote a letter to Professor Hanoch Dagan, the dean of the law faculty, claiming that Sharvit-Baruch's interpretation of the law during Israel's Gaza offensive allowed the army to act in ways that constitute potential war crimes. Ganz also said that Sharvit-Baruch harms Israel's values system.
Dr. Anat Matar, a lecturer at Tel Aviv University's philosophy department, said, "I was shocked to learn that half of the second-year law students will learn the foundations of law from someone who helped justify the killing of civilians, including hundreds of children."

Barak canceled his visit to Tel Aviv University's Law Department, after a graffiti sprayed on the walls of the building called him a 'murderer' The graffiti was drawn on the entryway to the Law Department ahead of the defense minister's visit.

Some Israel-hating Israelis are to be found in Israeli academia. And some of them are the cherished interviewees of the state owned German radio. Today, the journalist Birgit Kolkmann interviewed Prof. Moshe Zuckermann of Tel Aviv University, who said, about the conflict in Gaza:
“Time and time again civilians are affected. Also this time about 25 to 30 percent of the victims - one speaks in the meantime about more than 400,000 dead victims - are civilians.”
(In the German original: “es sind immer wieder Zivilisten in Mitleidenschaft gezogen. Auch diesmal waren ungefähr 25 bis 30 Prozent der bislang Umgekommenen - man redet mittlerweile von über 400.000 Todesopfern - Zivilisten.”
I’ve listened to the original broadcast, and there is no mistake: Zuckermann really did speak about 400.000 dead victims. (However, in the transcript of the interview, someone has corrected the number - it is perhaps easier to deceive the ears than the eyes.)

The current attack found the health system in Gaza in a state of near-collapse due to the blockade imposed upon it for the past year and a half, as well as previous closures. Even before this crisis the system was working in a severely restricted manner. Now it must handle wounded people who are in need of complex care by expert professionals, which in the current situation it cannot provide.
Targeting of civilians and/of medical facilities is a breach of international humanitarian law. The targets chosen by the Israeli military include also clearly civilian installations.
As occupying power currently in effective control of the area, Israel, which is currently carrying out a massive military operation in the Gaza Strip, must bear responsibility for the wounded of the attack, enable their access to hospitals able to care for them, respect medical neutrality of related facilities and allow entry of all necessary medical supplies for hospitals to be able to handle the wounded people.

The Arab Peace Initiative was designed to sow confusion in the ranks of the enemy, and that is what it has done. The promise of "peace" is so tempting, and the conditions so vague, that they can, and do, invite support from every well meaning and not-so-well-meaning analyst and adviser. The transition to a new president in the United States seems to many to be the ideal time to push for United States adoption of the Arab Peace Initiative. Surprisingly, not only Arabs, but Israelis and Zionists have jumped on this bandwagon. The latest to push for Israeli acceptance of the Arab Peace Initiative is Eyal Benvenisti. His article is entitled The Right of Return Myth. Benvenisti, a most esteemed professor of international law, uses the most astute legal arguments to assure us that the Arabs could not possibly intend for the Palestinian refugees to return to Israel, since that would be contrary to international law and to the provisions of General Assembly Resolution 194 as he interprets them.
...How can anyone seriously advocating support for a document or a policy when nobody knows what it means? Are the Arab states going to take it upon themselves to announce that Eyal Benvenisti will arbitrate all disputes about the meaning of Resolution 194?

There are those who are saying that the Beirut Declaration adopts the Palestinian reading of Resolution 194. This claim is untenable for a number of reasons, among them the recognition of the need for Israeli agreement and the statement that the Palestinians will not be resettled in Arab countries in which special circumstances prevent this. That was a promise to Lebanon, which understood that the declaration relinquishes the demand for return and therefore hastened to defend its fragile demographic balance. However, even if the claim that the Beirut Declaration adopts the Palestinian interpretation is true, in light of the correct interpretation of Resolution 194, Israel's acceptance of the initiative would not constitute recognition of the right of return.

Tonight: a demo against the criminal Israel military op in Gaza
Stop war crimes
Hadash (the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality - Communist Party of Israel) invites you to a demo, tonight (Saturday, December, 27) at 7:30 p.m. from the Cinemateque Square in Tel-Aviv

Yet, despite the hostile atmosphere in the Israeli public and leadership, we have managed to stage some very powerful actions in the past year, as the siege policies became increasingly tight. Thus, last winter, there was a relatively large 'Break the Siege' demonstration, held jointly in Erez and Gaza, in collaboration with the Gazan Coalition to End the Siege. Tens of cars drove along busy Israeli traffic arteries- from Tel Aviv, Haifa and Jerusalem- carrying banners that called to stop the siege on Gaza. At the end of the protest cavalcade, a few thousand demonstrators gathered just outside of the Erez crossing and heard speeches against the siege. In addition, we transferred truck-loads of goods provided according to a list we received from our Gazan partners, a transfer that involved much negotiation with the Israeli authorities. In another action, a boat carrying peace activists from around the world entered Gaza: its passengers held a demonstration and conducted press conferences in Gaza city.

Breaking the Silence, a group of former IDF soldiers, provides other former soldiers with the platform to give anonymous testimonials about human rights violations they encountered during their service in the Occupied Territories. The testimonials then serve to highlight the moral faults of the Occupation in the public sphere.
The Tel Aviv University Law Clinic's Refugee Rights program has been a leader in the struggle to obtain fair and legal treatment for refugees and asylum-seekers in Israel, one of the country's most trying human rights issues. Despite Israel's legal obligations to accept refugees, it is sending many of them straight back to Egypt and their countries of origin where they face imminent danger, without implementing the proper procedures for determining their status.

First - the "security" barrier. Since work on the erection of the security barrier began, government officials lied to the Supreme Court on several occasions, disguising their real motivation - settlement expansion - with security rhetoric. Moreover, when their lies were exposed, and the Court ordered a change in route (as in the Bil'in case), they have simply ignored the judgment. This is relatively well known. But there are other examples, no less significant for the future of the region: A recent Bimkom: Planners for Planning Rights report shows how Israeli planning policy in Area C has effectively fragmented the West Bank to allocate land almost exclusively for Israeli use.
As Yesh Din reports, civilian settler militias act violently against the Palestinian population, and with total impunity. In 90 percent of the cases filed from the onset of the Second Intifada until 2007, no investigation followed the complaint. Gisha has demonstrated how the long-term closure of Gaza has led not only to dire famine and poverty, but has also made Hamas an attractive supplier of energy, food and basic supplies.

"Companies have a social as well as a legal responsibility and must therefore take no part in the illegal occupation," Merav Amir of the Coalition of Women for Peace (CWP), told IPS. "In order to comply with international human rights law, companies should make sure that their businesses have nothing to do with the occupation."
CWP is an Israeli feminist peace organisation that carries out grassroots research, and has built a database with information about companies in industrial zones within the occupied territories. An IPS investigation revealed that Vileda appeared in both that database and the list of U.N. Global Compact participants.
Amir says companies located in the territories benefit from reduced taxes, little or no enforcement of labour laws, a captive labour market, very cheap real estate prices and lax enforcement of environmental regulations.

We in Holland –by ‘we’ is meant: A Different Jewish Voice, Amsterdam- read about the laudable call by twenty two human rights, humanitarian and peace organizations upon the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to place human rights conditionalities on Israel within the framework of Israel's accession to the OECD.
We would like hereby to ask your attention for another important and wholly independent argument concerning the matter of Israel’s admittance to the OECD that we missed it in the arguments already put forward.
It is about mentioning the fact that Israel is breaching each and every principle of "free market" economy in the OT – and this is what the OECD is supposed to promote.
It was the Israeli academic Ran HaCohen from Tel Aviv University who succinctly pointed to this argument in his article Keep Israel out of elite economic club The Electronic Intifada, 17 June 2008
...
We would appreciate if this important argument -about ‘free economy’ made a farce by Israel in its treatment of Palestinian territory, society and economy- could be added to your campaign.
If judged useful you can reach Mr. Ran HaCohen by email: hacohen@post.tau.ac.il He is informed that we bring this to your attention.

It is not taught in Israeli schools but most of the early Zionist leaders, including David Ben Gurion [Israel’s first prime minister], believed that the Palestinians were the descendants of the area’s original Jews. They believed the Jews had later converted to Islam.”
Dr Sand attributed his colleagues’ reticence to engage with him to an implicit acknowledgement by many that the whole edifice of “Jewish history” taught at Israeli universities is built like a house of cards.
The problem with the teaching of history in Israel, Dr Sand said, dates to a decision in the 1930s to separate history into two disciplines: general history and Jewish history. Jewish history was assumed to need its own field of study because Jewish experience was considered unique.
“There’s no Jewish department of politics or sociology at the universities. Only history is taught in this way, and it has allowed specialists in Jewish history to live in a very insular and conservative world where they are not touched by modern developments in historical research.
“I’ve been criticised in Israel for writing about Jewish history when European history is my specialty. But a book like this needed a historian who is familiar with the standard concepts of historical inquiry used by academia in the rest of the world.”

Discussion :
From the Right of Return to One State Raja’a Omari and Yehuda
Kupferman will argue that the bloody conflict which has split the
country since 1948 will end only if its cause – the nakba
– is addressed, and the right of the refugees and the expellees
to return is recognized. Implementation of the right of return will
reunite the Palestinian people in their land, and point the way to its
reunification. This will lay the foundation for a state whose members will not be defined by their ethnic identification, but simply as citizens. Raja’a Omari is active in "Abnaa al-Balad (The sons of the Land), the Committee for a Secular Democratic Republic, the Haifa Conference Forum and "Ajras al-Awda" (Bells of Return). Yehuda Kupferman is active in the Committee for a Secular Democratic Republic and the Haifa Conference Forum. Tuesday, 7 October 2008, at 20:00.

The conference will bring together political decision-makers, international academics, and civil society leaders. Participants will discuss existing policy proposals (to be distributed in advance), and draft a collective policy paper, to be presented to Israeli and Palestinian political leaders, the new US administration, the European Union, United Nations, Russia, and
the Quartet representatives....
a genuine peace agreement based upon: the Arab Peace Initiative and the previous agreements signed between the two sides; the implementation of UN Security Council Resolutions 242, 338 and 1397; a fair agreed-upon solution to the Palestinian refugees problem in consideration of General Assembly Resolution 194; the end of the Israeli occupation; the evacuation of all Jewish settlements from within the final borders of the State of Palestine;
and a solution for Jerusalem based upon keeping it as one city but establishing it as the capital of the two states: Palestine and Israel. Such an agreement should have a timetable and a mechanism for implementation, and be conducive to the establishment of an Independent, sovereign Palestinian state within the borders of the 4th of June 1967, with limited mutually agreed-upon 1:1 swaps to meet the vital needs of the
two states.

Sixty years after its foundation, Israel refuses to accept that it shouldexist for the sake of its citizens. For almost a quarter of the population,who are not regarded as Jews, this is not their state legally. At the sametime, Israel presents itself as the homeland of Jews throughout the world,even if these are no longer persecuted refugees, but the full and equal citizens of other countries.
A global ethnocracy invokes the myth of the eternal nation, reconstitutedon the land of its ancestors, to justify internal discrimination against its own citizens.

In our collective memory, the termination of occupation is associated with the joy of liberation. We tend to view this period as one of enormous excitement, of self- and collective fulfillment. But there may be different scenarios, especially in times when occupants experience the severe costs associated with their position. Unilateral withdrawals can be events as painful as other situations of political transition in which the protection of individual rights is particularly important. Probably given the rather idyllic connotation, the law of occupation has so far failed to seriously address the occupant’s obligations in anticipation of and during the transitional period at the end of the occupation. It is time to fill this gap

The Israeli proposal – as its "security arrangements" reveal – proves once again that Israel is no partner for peace. On the ground, all that Israel seeks is time to expand the settlements and strangle Palestinian society, hoping the "Palestinian problem" will eventually disappear. On the discourse level, however, things are just as bad. Despite the false contrary impression cultivated by the Israeli propaganda machine, Israel clearly rejects the notion of an independent Palestinian state, other than a Bantustan under total Israeli control. If you wonder why the Israeli-Palestinian conflict remains unresolved, this is the simple answer: the two-state solution, proposed by the UN 60 years ago and endorsed by the Palestinians 20 years ago, is still unacceptable to Israel's military and political leadership.

For 60 years, both the Israelis and the Palestinians have used the
past to illuminate the present and confer legitimacy on their nations'
respective founding myths. Of course, Zionists and Palestinian
nationalists were not the first to embellish the stories of their
nations' births or make excuses for their tragedies. Throughout
history, nations have been born in blood and frequently in sin.

We saw one such effort, in the hands of an amateur, when we considered the theories of professor Shlomo Zand about the origin of the Jews. Zand is primarily an ideologue, and invented facts to fit his fancy. He wove a fairy tale that can be believed by the ignorant to support intellectual impudence.
The book before us is of an entirely different caliber. Raphael Falk is an acknowledged expert in human genetics and a reasonably careful scientist. His careful reasoning brings sanity, logic and decency to counter the demagoguery of political argumentation. It is not a perfect book, but Hebrew readers will find it entertaining, informative and insightful. What a pity that Zand's book, but not this one, is being published in English!

Israel's ruling elite now has a major aspiration: to join the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) as a member country. For the sake of the Israelis and of their neighbors, this aspiration should be thwarted by an international campaign of all supporters of peace; and, in fact, by supporters of the free market as well.

Analyzing this image I will first discuss the historical associations of the image, arguing that the associations with the Holocaust are actually a way to minimize the pain and suffering of the Palestinians under Israeli occupation rather than highlighting them in a broader universal context. Another aspect of this image is connected to the technologies of creating and disseminating images of conflict/occupation and how they affect the ethical discussions surrounding this incident. In my conclusion I will argue that historical associations and technological innovations can create conflicting and even contradictory constellations which tend to obscure rather than sharpen the ethical dimensions of images like the Palestinian violin player at the check point.

The Ruthless Outcomes of Occupation
In my view the most salient sign of the democratic and moral deterioration of Israeli Jewish society is the lasting occupation. During the years of the Israeli occupation, a deep-rooted system of dual sets of legal norms developed in the West Bank: one for the Jewish settlers and one for the Palestinian population. These dual sets enabled the establishment of a system of segregation, discrimination and control on ethnic grounds in the
occupied territories, with all the negative implications.

Since it is now a core belief of academic "progressives" that Israel is the world's most wicked country, responsible for all the globe's miseries except (perhaps) avian flu, it's hardly surprising that the very day of that country's sixtieth birthday should, in an act of depraved malevolence, have been marked
at UW by the appearance, courtesy of the Simpson Center and the Graduate School, of two Israel-hating lecturers. We were treated to both Norman Finkelstein, the failed academic and beloved dream-Jew of all the world's antisemites, and Yitzhak Laor, a second-tier poet who specializes in depicting
Israel as the devil's experiment station.
Laor delivered the (once prestigious) John Danz Lecture.
A few people at UW may remember that the Danz lectures were founded to deal with "the role of science in society and in understanding a rational universe."

PRACTICAL APPROACHES TO INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL LAW
Judging war criminals: War crimes trials - from theory to practice Adv. Sharon Weill
The course aims to introduce the international criminal legal system and to examine the different options available for repressing war crimes. Examples of war crimes trials in different conflicts will be presented, as well as other options, such as truth commissions, while focusing on the Palestinian-Israeli context of international criminal law. The course is open for legal, civil and
media activists with keen interest in human rights.

We, students and employees of Tel Aviv University and their supporters, hereby request that you take action to commemorate a chapter in the history of our institution which has heretofore been silenced – the fact of its erection on the lands of the Palestinian village of Sheikh Muwanis, which was destroyed in 1948 and its residents forced to become refugees.

Peace Now's focus on the issues of the occupation and settlements was not a political caprice, but rather an expression of a worldview that sees the Jewish people as fundamentally identifying with those who are occupied, and despising the occupier and oppressor. For us, ruling over another people is akin to being "Terefah."

Zand’s work appears to be another manifestation of mental disorder in the extreme academic Left in Israel, similar to the completely insane thesis that the IDF’s failure to rape Arab women is a racist phenomenon.

Peoplehood is based on personal and collective identity, which is a f'unction of personal choice, not genetics. If people believe myths or facts about flying horses, converted "Berbers," Joshua and the walls of Jericho or other myths, it is because they choose to believe them, as they reinforce their identity and the choices they have made, and not the other way round. Israeli democracy is problematic. The political systems of neighboring states are certainly no less problematic. Jewish criteria for deciding who is a Jew based on maternal inheritance and Israeli criteria that are based on a Jewish grandparent are equally arbitrary and
capricious. However, the way to correct all these problems is not to erase 3,000 years of history or to deny the right of self determination to the Jewish people or the Arabs of Palestine. The secular democratic Zandinista Yiddishist state of all its citizens will put all its citizens in a miserable state. Injustices cannot be corrected by falsehoods and worse injustices.

"To my mind, a myth about the future is better than introverted
mythologies of the past. For the Americans, and today for the Europeans as well, what justifies the existence of the nation is a future promise of an open, progressive and prosperous society. The Israeli materials do exist, but it is necessary to add, for example, pan-Israeli holidays. To decrease the number of memorial days a bit and to add days that are dedicated to the future. But also, for example, to add an hour in memory of the Nakba [literally, the "catastrophe" - the Palestinian term for what happened when Israel was established], between Memorial Day and Independence Day."

In conjunction with Israel's 60th anniversary
You are invited for a tour in the destroyed Palestinian village Sheikh Mounis
Wednesday 26.3. at 12:00
What is between the destroyed village and Tel Aviv University which was built on its lands?

Israel's Declaration of Independence states that the Jewish people arose in the Land of Israel and was exiled from its homeland. Every Israeli schoolchild is taught that this happened during the period of Roman rule, in 70 CE. The nation remained loyal to its land, to which it began to return after two millennia of exile. Wrong, says the historian Shlomo Zand, in one of the most fascinating and challenging books published here in a long time. There never was a Jewish people, only a Jewish religion, and the exile also never happened - hence there was no return. Zand rejects most of the stories of national-identity formation in the Bible, including the exodus from Egypt and, most satisfactorily, the horrors of the conquest under Joshua. It's all fiction and myth that served as an excuse for the establishment of the State of Israel, he asserts.

Friday, March o7th 2008: Al-Khader Popular Committee against the Wall and Settlements with Al-Khader community invite you to join us in the weekly demonstration that will take place at the southern side of the village near the bypass, route 60.
The motto of this demo is:
Free Palestine, Free Women, Freedom for all the Oppressed

Israel violates all international laws. Not only the Geneva Convention. The Hague International Court of justice condemned the illegal wall that Israel has built on confiscated Palestinian land. The book event, or any other kind of exhibition in which the Israeli State is invited, is not a way to promote peace in the Middle East, and not a way to bring justice to the Palestinians, but only propaganda to give Israel an image of being a liberal and democratic society. A State which maintains an occupation and commits daily crimes against civilians does not deserve to be invited to whichever cultural week. We cannot accept to be part of that. Israel is not a democratic State but an apartheid State. We cannot support that State at all.

Dr. Adi Ophir said the two ways Israel maintains control in the occupied territories are submission and separation. Ophir explained that submission and separation are working in opposite directions; submission requires constant contact, best illustrated by the checkpoints, whereas separation requires a lack of contact. This is why, he argued, submission and separation are in constant flux to balance each other out. When new lines of separation are drawn a new form of submission is needed, and visa versa. This is why, Ophir argued, there are two possible outcomes; ethnic cleansing, or a political resolution. Ethnic cleansing would spell the end of the occupation, and the end of the need for both separation and submission. A political resolution, on the other hand, would have to end submission to create two states and eliminated the need for separation.

Officials at a Columbia University department established in 2005 to balance an anti-Israel tilt in Middle Eastern scholarship at the university have appointed as its director a professor who signed a letter labeling Israeli policy "the occupation and oppression of another people."
Supporters of Israel on campus say they are disappointed about the appointment of Yinon Cohen as the new director of the Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies, in light of his previous statements.

Dr. Ruchama Marton, the founder and president of PHR-Israel, gave a lecture in Israeli Apartheid Week in London about the unrecognized villages in the Negev.
The aim of IAW is to contribute to the chorus of international opposition to Israeli apartheid and to bolster support for the boycotts, divestments and sanctions (BDS) against apartheid Israel

the true reason not to seriously negotiate – Israel already says the end of the year is much too early to strike a deal even with Abu Mazen! – is that Israel is unwilling to end the occupation. Not only land and water are at stake, but, as Meron Rapoport of Ha'aretz recently reminded, more than 6 percent of all Israeli exports (excluding diamonds) go to the occupied Palestinian market, about $2 billion a year, more than to France and Italy combined: fruits and vegetables, medicines and hospital equipment, water and electricity, steel and cement. A captive market, where products not good enough for the Israeli customer can be dumped for good money (from the donor countries). A precious asset in a competitive capitalist world.

Anat Biletzki and the group B'Tselem have conducted painstaking studies of how Israel’s longstanding agenda of allowing its civilians to settle on Palestinian occupied land constitutes an infringement of the Palestinians’ basic equality, property rights, freedom of movement, their very “right to self-determination.” The settlements were given a “cloak of legality,” sanctioned as they were by one Israeli government after another.
Geographically, the settlements break up what might have been a contiguous Palestinian state.
Biletzki ties the settlements together with other work by the Israelis conducted in the name of security to demonstrate the existence of a forbidding, two-tier society : a system of roads off limits to Palestinians in the occupied territories, or permitted only via carefully guarded checkpoints; the wall (or separation barrier), which runs through Palestinian land; and the total control of Gaza, from the economy to communications, which increasingly makes it “a big prison.” This barricading of Palestinians has become a “routine phenomenon” –and not worthy of the headlines, in the way bombs and torture are, says Biletzki. She insists that “our political conversation must become a human rights conversation,” and hopes that she can make an impact on American Jews and policy makers, who don’t believe in the possibility of making a deal with the Palestinians: “If we give them the land, they’ll throw us into the sea

Bethlehem – Palestine / Friday February 8th, 2008 - The Popular Committee against the Wall and Colonization in Al-Khader is organizing a nonviolent demonstration to protest the construction of the annexation wall in the town of Al-Khader, located south of Bethlehem. The protestors will also call for an end to the killing of children, thousands of whom have fallen victim to the 40 year old Israeli Occupation of the Palestinian Territories.

The Palestinians living under occupation must resist. When Israel, the U.S., and the international community does not take notice of nonviolent resistance, when only the horrors of violence focus the attention of the world on the horrors of occupation, the outcome should not be a surprise. Condemnation of violent tactics is hollow when not linked with active support and participation in all the available nonviolent methods: protest, civil disobedience, lobbying, boycotts and sanctions.

Dor argues that media outlets present what their consumers want to perceive, in order to “maintain their own imagined communities.” Their goal is thus not to be liked by the audience, but rather to maintain the special role of media institutions in Israeli society.

Part of the "Joint Struggle against Israeli Apartheid "
'The solidarity between the Palestinian residents of Bil'in village, internationals and the anti-occupation and anti-Zionist Israelis who each week trekked to the village has become an inspiring model for joint popular struggle....The solidarity between the Palestinian residents of Bil'in village, internationals and the anti-occupation and anti-Zionist Israelis who each week trekked to the village has become an inspiring model for joint popular struggle, not only in Palestine but also around the world.'

'The best part was to have a real refusenik (Israeli former soldier who joined the peace demonstrations and refused to serve further) Elad Orian there, he gave many intersting tales about his experience, such as going for the first time with sniper mentality among palestinians shouting allah ho akbar, his experiences with army and how once arrested the soldiers could talk to him freely, how some sent secret text messages expressing support during the demonstration, how Israeli society has largely come to conclusion that the occupation isnt sustainable (mentality is something like ok one way or other lets keep palestinians out so build wall, or else their population grows and jewish majority cant exist) so peace movements has many supoorters so the film was also quite popular but its big step to actually be an activist supporting their cause, to be on the "other side".'

The University of Tel Aviv is hosting the Iraqi-Israeli-British new historian for a lecture on King Hussein and Israel. Will he tell them what he wrote on page 8 of his new book? That the Balfour Declararion calling for a jewish Homeland was an Atrocity?

Herzog: 'Our central argument is that racism, as a signifier of policy, can be located in the dialectic between denial and affirmation of the category of race, while we link the scope and meanings of practices marked by the media as 'racism' to contingent cultural, social and historical conditions. The article proposes the periodization of the relevant discourse into three primary phases: from 1949 to the late 1970s, when the category of racism was 'prohibited' in Israeli discourse in the aftermath of the Holocaust; the mid-1980s, when this taboo was broken and the phenomena included in the category of racism expanded accordingly; and the 1990s to 2000, during which racism became an institutionalized, all-encompassing discursive term.'

Professor Ziv is the embodiment of how the abstractions of academia can ultimately lead to the opposite of what the academy was meant to do: to enhance society through the application of scholastic study and scientific inquiry to arrive at truth. This is clearly present in her applications of American jurisprudence to Israel’s situation as a tiny democratic country surrounded by a sea of Arab nationalist and Islamic dictatorships calling for the state’s destruction. Ziv defines her activities as preserving human rights; others might define them as enabling the enemies of Israel to destroy the Jewish state. As an educator, she promotes developing what could be considered “cause lawyers” who use the courts to promote a radical agenda against the state in time of war.

Professor Biletzki’s analytical philosophy is to smear Israel abroad politically at anti-Israel symposiums and events on college campuses and elsewhere that are fundamentally organized by Arab irredentist groups that frequently use the words “human rights” and “peace” as a deceptive cover to destroy the Jewish state. As an expert in the philosophy of language, Professor Biletzki of all people should understand how language is used to mask real intent, particularly by Arab propagandists. Despite this, she speaks frequently to and is quoted extensively by members of the International Solidarity Movement who claim to be “nonviolent human rights advocates” in one breath, then endorse violence against Israelis as “legitimate resistance” in the next as they act as human shields for terrorists

Carlo Strenger wants to see Israel boycotted, Israel is the cause for terrorism.

'Israel's way of dealing with the Palestinians and Lebanon in the last few decades has led to a long-term process in which the Western world is beginning to see Israel as a pariah state that has no true affinity to Western values. Hence, it is not on the 'right' side of the clash of civilizations, as was reflected in the French ambassador to Britain calling Israel "that shitty little country" not long ago.'

'Yigal Bronner is one of over 600 signers of the Courage to Refuse statement (www.seruv.org) and one of over 1600 Israeli soldiers (www.refusersolidarity.net) who refuse to serve in the occupied territories. For his conscientious objection, Bronner served a jail term in Israel. Bronner has worked extensively with Ta’ayush, the Arab-Jewish Partnership (www.taayush.org), a groundbreaking activist organization that fosters Israeli-Palestinian cooperation to challenge policies of occupation.
In addition, he has been one of the leading voices in the campaign against the Israeli Separation Wall, currently under construction in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. Using maps and statistics from the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem, Bronner’s presentation will examine the location and construction of the barrier, as well as its social, economic, and political impact. Bronner teaches South Asian Studies at Tel Aviv University and the University of Chicago.'

FairPlay Media, the creative arm of Strategic Assessments, connects the personal to the political by developing and delivering sophisticated entertainment content to a variety of US based media platforms. With the primary mission of transforming U.S. popular conception of the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict while asserting the cultural identity and fundamental rights of the Palestinian people, FairPlay Media leverages the most effective forms of communication in the marketplace.
Think Tanks: FPM co-sponsored and produced three content development Think Tanks with Israeli and Palestinian historians, authors, and filmmakers.
Tel Aviv University: Tom Segev, Sami Michael, Salman Natour, Salem Jubran, Nurit Gertz, Dafna Golan, Eli Amir, Freddie Rokem, Dan Rabinowitz, Dorit Rabinyan

Shenhav: 'Israel has used the Arab-Jews, and the population exchange theory, to abdicate its responsibility for the expulsion of the Palestinians from Palestine in 1948 and 1967, to alleviate demands to compensate the Palestinian refugees for their
property confiscated by the Israeli government, and to serve as a bargaining chip against the right of return. For all practical purposes, the population exchange initiative was used in the political discourse to legitimize Israel’s wrongdoing with regards to the transfer of the Palestinian refugees in 1948. However, Israel has used the theory vaguely and ambiguously throughout the 54 years of its existence. It has used quasi-governmental organizations such as the Jewish Agency and the World Organization of Jews from Arab Countries to blur its practices and at the same time act upon them. '

It's a very burdensome bureaucratic move to actually change the title," said Neta Ziv, director of the Human Rights Clinic at Tel Aviv University and the attorney in the landmark Ka'adan case, in which an Arab family appealed to the High Court after being prevented from purchasing land in a new community intended exclusively for Jews. "Land swapping is not something that you do overnight," Ziv said. "Many times Arab buyers back off the deal because it got complicated, so they kind of gave it up. It doesn't really work."

Bar-Tal: 'Israeli school textbooks as well as children's storybooks, according to recent academic studies and surveys, portray Palestinians and Arabs as "murderers," "rioters," "suspicious," and generally backward and unproductive. Direct delegitimization and negative stereotyping of Palestinians and Arabs are the rule rather than the exception in Israeli schoolbooks. Professor Daniel Bar-Tal of Tel Aviv University studied 124 elementary, middle- and high school textbooks on grammar and Hebrew literature, history, geography and citizenship. Bar-Tal concluded that Israeli textbooks present the view that Jews are involved in a justified, even humanitarian, war against an Arab enemy that refuses to accept and acknowledge the existence and rights of Jews in Israel.
"The early textbooks tended to describe acts of Arabs as hostile, deviant, cruel, immoral, unfair, with the intention to hurt Jews and to annihilate the State of Israel. Within this frame of reference, Arabs were delegitimized by the use of such labels as 'robbers,' 'bloodthirsty,' and 'killers,'" said Professor Bar-Tal, adding that there has been little positive revision in the curriculum over the years.

History textbooks for Israeli Arab students this year will, for the first time, present the Palestinian version of Israel's creation as a "catastrophe," the education ministry said Sunday.
"For these types of events, both the Israeli and Palestinian versions have to be presented," education minister Yuli Tamir said in a statement

The outcome is that the ordinary Palestinian cannot have clear knowledge which way is passable and which is forbidden as well as what is the sanction for the lawbreaker. Thus a spatial chaos is produced minimizing movement to the level of life maintaining
activities on the one hand – and creating a-priori guiltiness on the other hand (since nearly every movement is restricted and most of Palestinians are therefore movement criminals).

Algazi: 'But the reality of the conflict is a colonial – one that is determined, first and foremost, by the facts on the ground, by bulldozers and fences. Colonialism does not exhaust itself in diplomatic maneuvers or spectacular acts of violence. It is a social and economic process that changes nature itself, the fabric of social life, reallocates resources and leaves people dispossessed. Its results are always in a sense irreversible: social reality cannot be simply restored to its pristine state; one can – and should – confront its evils, but this is a long and painful struggle against a new social and economic reality.'

Hacohen: ' Fatah's hysteria should now turn it into an Israeli proxy, dependent on Israel to survive, serving Israel's interests, and using ever more violence against the Palestinian opposition, which happened to win the democratic elections. Forget removal of roadblocks, let alone of outposts and settlements; forget work permits in Israel; forget freedom, of movement or otherwise; forget a Palestinian state. The occupation is here to stay.'

In the article "The Arab Image in Hebrew School Textbooks" by professor Dan Bar-Tal of the Tel Aviv University makes a study of 124 textbooks used in Israeli schools and reports that "over the years, generations of Israeli Jews were taught a negative and often delegitimizing view of Arabs." The two main traits of Arabs in the textbooks are "primitiveness, inferiority in comparison to Jews" and "their violence, to characteristics like brutality, untrustworthiness, cruelty, fanaticism, treacherousness and aggressiveness."
Such demonisation appears reminiscent of what one would expect to find in Nazi Germany. In fact after reading the following, one could easily conclude that Israeli textbooks present the Arabs as the 'Untermensch' of Palestine.

There are many people in this country who viewed the occupation in horror while serving in the territories during their standing or reserve army duties. For some, the occupation scraped their conscience. From those troops emerged the voice calling for refusal to serve in the Territories. Thanks to them, the majority of the population has internalized the idea that ruling over another people until the end of time does not garner respect and security for Israel.

"Israel is regarded by its Western allies as an open, liberaldemocracy. It is not," she said. "For more than two thirds of itsexistence, Israel has been occupying the Palestinian territories and,in recent years, the severity of this occupying regime has been greatly intensified."
...
She adds: "An objection to the academic boycott we often hear is that Israeli academics are liberal and oppose the occupation, hence it would be unjust to boycott them. This is simply not true."

Finally the panel featured Prof. Rachel Giora, one of the most extremist and battiest Israel-haters at Tel Aviv University. Giora, whose discourse on the show was so amazingly arrogant and irrational, went on at length about why she supports the boycott and how the anti-Semites in Britain calling for the boycott are the true friends of Israel . the proof being that many of the leftists there boycotting Israel are themselves British Jews. Some proof.
Part of the TV debate wandered off topic and developed into an argument of Right vs. Left in Israel. But other than the ultra-extremist Giora, all accepted the proposition that debate over Israeli defense and national policy is properly conducted among Israelis and that it is anti-democratic to drag in hostile foreign organizations.

Carlo Strenger is a psychology professor at Tel Aviv University. The department of psychology at Tel Aviv University is home to quite a few leftist extremists and runs anti-Israel one-sided indoctrination courses as part of its curriculum (see this for details). Strenger is moderate in comparison to some of the ultras at Tel Aviv University. He has published papers claiming that Israel is a racist bigoted anti-Sephardic place and, more generally, that Israeli "prejudice" is what drives the Arab-Israeli war.
He claims to be an expert on terror, at least its psychological aspects, and is part of a panel on terror of the World Federation of Scientists (WFS). Not surprisingly, these are people who think that terror is caused by "grievances" and can be contained by redressing those grievances.

There could be no more apt manifestation of the demise of Israel's social democracy after 40 years of occupation. As prophesied, the occupation--in addition to its effects on the Palestinians--has brought about the moral and political bankruptcy of the Israeli state.

In fact, Israel's refusal to abide by this longstanding international consensus apparently puts its occupation squarely in the same category as Iraq's illegal occupation of Kuwait. "[A]n occupation regime that refuses to earnestly contribute to efforts to reach a peaceful solution should be considered illegal," Tel Aviv University law professor Eyal Benvenisti opines: Indeed, such a refusal should be considered outright annexation.
The occupant has a duty under international law to conduct negotiations in good faith for a peaceful solution. It would seem that an occupant who proposes unreasonable conditions, or otherwise obstructs negotiations for peace for the purpose of retaining control over the occupied territory, could be
considered a violator of international law

Who would bother to remind us that all this is nothing but a lie? The abused Palestinians haven't felt any relief whatsoever, but have been cynically cheated once again. And all of us media consumers have been duped along with them

The Israeli reactions to the Palestinian suffering for which they are morally responsible, especially when set against the background of their ostensible concern about world hunger, show how pervasively inhumane the Israelis have become. A well-oiled propaganda machine turns them from compassionate human beings into heartless parrots of state demagoguery, ready to ignore, excuse, and even support the starvation of the other nation with which they share the same land. The dehumanization of the Palestinians by Israel has dehumanized the Israelis themselves.

The coalition of six Palestinian organisations described Reinhart as "not only a great indefatigable activist against the policy of the Zionist government of Apartheid Israel towards us, Palestinians, but also a fighter for human rights denouncing injustices committed everywhere, whether in Palestine or Iraq. She took part in all the battles against the colonization and the occupation of Palestine, and was one of the most lucid analysts of the criminal policy of her government."...The coalition also specifically praised Reinhart for her support of a boycott of Israeli academia. "Tanya was also one of the rare Israeli opposition personalities to support the boycott of her country's
institutions, especially the Universities," the coalition writes

Denying the political nature of these prisoners and referring to them collectively as "security" prisoners strips them of their humanity on both of the levels noted earlier by rejecting their individuality and their political nature. It is important to note here, however, that the latter  their politicization  is not individual. Rejecting the Palestinian political prisoner's political essence is a rejection that goes beyond denying his particular act of resistance; it is necessarily a rejection of the entire
Palestinian political experience,...the entire Palestinian struggle is denied via the "security" label. The entire political existence is fossilized and turned into a type of dangerous object for the "only individual subject" in its proximity. Thus, their resistance is not

While Reinhart focused more on the anti-apartheid model of resistance, her lecture lacked Massad's organization. While initially criticizing international demands on the Palestinians to renounce violence and recognize past accords, Reinhart eventually lauded the South African model of anti-apartheid resistance through divestment and sanctions. She considered it the preferable, nonviolent alternative to wiping Israel off the map, the plan Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has endorsed.

Chen Alon will present his research and practice adapting Augusto Boal's "Theatre of the Oppressed" within the Israeli-Palestinian political context. Alon's work expands on the ethodology developed at Tel-Aviv University within its community theatre program, connecting students with state prisons and drug addiction-homeless rehabilitation centers....

Within this trap laid down by the occupying power, thousands of
Palestinian families who wish to remain together are condemned to emigrate. This new policy is intended to throw out masses of people. It is a policy of ethnic cleansing.

At the Tel Aviv University conference, Rubinstein noted, the speaker who received the greatest applause was Tali Fahima, a Jewish woman recently released from prison who had assisted her Palestinian boyfriend in planning terror attacks. Another featured speaker at the event was a Palestinian terrorist who had been imprisoned for his crimes (which included throwing a Molotov cocktail at a civilian bus) by Israel for 27 years.
Rubinstein pointed out that the people who run TAU law school never even considered balancing the presence of terrorists with victims of Palestinian terror. At Tel Aviv University, murderers and terrorists of Jews are entitled to “civil rights” – but not Jewish civilians.

Tel Aviv University's Faculty of Law held a conference on January 8 entitled "Security prisoners or political prisoners?" According to the original plan, all the scheduled speakers were from the Left, with some coming from the extreme, anti-Israeli Left. When this triggered an outcry, the faculty heads hurriedly added a couple of speakers representing mainstream Israel and its institutions.

Dear Rachel Giora,
thank you very much for your e-mail.
As Head of the Legal and Consular Department in the German Embassy I am dealing with the topic of "Entry of EU nationals to the OccupiedTerritories".
I would be glad to meet with you in order to discuss the topic.
Would you please call me at 03-6931 319 in order to set up an ppointment.

The Ambassador of Greece Mr. Nicholas Zafiropoulos has agreed in principle to your request for a meeting.
Kindly contact me to coordinate a suitable date.
Giselle Cohen
PA to the Ambassador
03-6951088

The basic theme of the conference, sponsored in part by the Tel Aviv University Law School (a bastion of pro-terror), was that Palestinians who blow up pregnant women and their children and then get imprisoned are "political prisoners". Yemini in his column points out that "rights discourse" is now little more than a weapon being used to destroy Israel by Israel's enemies and by the enemies of human freedom. He mocks "progressives" who rationalize the murderous behavior of terrorists as part of "understanding the Other".

Protesting an apartheid road:
On Saturday, 23 December, over two hundred Palestinians, Israelis, and internationals, marched in protest of a new settler-only road in the occupied West Bank, that will connect the Etzion settlement bloc with the settlement of Kiryat Arba. The road will be 10 kilometers long and 165 meters wide, and will confiscate 1300 dunums of land from the village of Halhul. The road will also result in the theft of grape and citrus farms, and the demolition of greenhouses belonging to the al Arub agricultural college in Halhul.
Present at the demonstration were the mayors of both Halhul and Beit Omar villages who spoke of the danger of the road and called on the Palestinian people and authorities to halt its building. The march, and rally at the agricultural college, was the largest joint Palestinian-Israeli-International action in the area to date.

'Julius and Schama know very well why Israel is likened to apartheid South Africa: not because of minorities within it discriminated as they are), but because of the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza....

"This is not the first boycott call directed at Jews." What a manipulation. Berger's is indeed not the first boycott directed against Jews: it's not a boycott directed against Jews at all. It is directed against Israel, not against Jews.'

On Jan 8 the Law School at TAU will be conducting a conference dedicated to the proposition that jailed Arab murderers and terrorists who have perpetrated mass atrocities against Jewish civilians are "political prisoners". Co-sponsored by the Law School, the "Minerva Center" (a far-leftist group pretending to be a human rights watchdog), and "Adalah", a radical Arab NGO, the conference is titled "Security Prisoners or Political Prisoners?" and the answer that the conference will give to that question is obvious from the roster of speakers.

The Ramallah Lynching Revisited
...Tthe Israeli propaganda machine, followed by the Western media, portrayed the event as that of two innocent Israelis abused and killed by a Palestinian mob, their corpses thrown out of a window in Ramallah – we all remember the pictures. The Palestinian side of the story was left unheard: the two uniformed Israeli soldiers entered the autonomous Ramallah during the mass funeral of a Palestinian child, whose body was found in an Israeli settlement a day before: that's why so many media teams happened to be in Ramallah at the time. Rumors spread that the soldiers invaded Ramallah in order to spill even more Palestinian blood. This does not excuse their killing, but two uniformed occupier's soldiers violating Palestinian autonomous territory during a funeral of a murdered child is a very different story from the one that stayed in the Western collective memory – namely, as yet another instance of the eternal framing "They are killing innocent Jews" (file under anti-Semitism, Holocaust, etc.).

The struggle against the occupation must be total. It must be an anti-colonial struggle that will connect between external colonialism and internal colonialism. It cannot separate issues of inequality from issues of political justice, or the opposite. It means boycotting companies that produce goods for perpetuating the occupation, such as those companies which produce goods while oppressing their workers in Israel or outside of it. It is a struggle which understands the occupation in its totality. Not a separation between here and there, not a separation between state and society, not a separation between politics and culture, but an outlook which sees the occupation as an inseparable part of the imperial history in the Middle East.

Typically, the propaganda quotes just one side: the army, the soldiers, i.e., the perpetrators. Not a single victim is interviewed: we don't know under what circumstances they were kidnapped, we don't know if a single word of the soldiers is true, we don't know what the arrestees have to pay for their release (collaboration, as usual?). Even the fact that children are kidnapped doesn't arouse any question on the part of the "journalist" or his editors in the "free press."
And, to be on the safe side, this pure propaganda doesn't leave out the inevitable comparison between Israel – the regional power that strangulates Gaza, kills and wounds its citizens, men, women and children, by conventional and satanic experimental weapons, and abducts them arbitrarily to its camps – and the Palestinian side, which abducted one Israeli soldier and harasses the Israeli civilians living around Gaza by primitive missiles. That's what the distorted comparison between victims and perpetrators looks like:
"It is sad that on the other side respect to human life in not as such, as they use children as human shields and an innocent population is under constant threat because of terror groups."

The root of the problem is that the entire imperialist order based on decaying capitalism is an obstacle to the development of the productive forces, an obstacle that keeps the majority of the population in the region in dire poverty. This contradiction id destined to get bigger. The only way out is for the working class to place itself at the head of the masses in the struggle to solve the democratic tasks. Only if the working class takes power into its own hands will there be any hope of a solution. The contradictions within the present socio-economic order to not allow for any long-lasting "peaceful" solution. The underlying contradictions will come to the surface again and again. That is why genuine socialist in the region must join together in a common struggle for socialist
transformation of the entire region. And this can only take place as part of the common struggle of workers in all countries for the socialist transformation of the world."

Writ minutely, but no less perniciously, i(Israel) has violated rights galore—the right to marry and found families, freedom of movement, the right to education, the right to earn a living, the right to health, to property, and on and on and on. Headlines scream out atrocities, but tell little of humdrum wickedness, of banal and routine evil. So when a pregnant woman dies at the checkpoint, or when a violinist is made to play there, when a family is murdered on a beach, or a girl is run-over by a bulldozer, we are treated to the details of the horrors. But the everyday of Occupation, the crippling and dismantling of the very marrow of a society, never makes it into the news. Yet it is this routine of Occupation, and its acceptance by Israelis by and large, that makes up the background to this latest war.

we must, as academics, never forget our political agenda: the eradication of evil. And the Israeli occupation of Palestine is the epitome of evil.We must constantly, as academics, identify with Palestinian teachers and students in conditions of severe repression.We must constantly, as academics, criticize the acquiescence of others in Israel to the occupation. And we must constantly, as academics, call for condemnation of the occupation. ¨

So we spread out the signs, there on the desolate road with the barbed wires under the blazing August noon sun: "Freedom for the Political Prisoners!" and "Prisoner Exchange - Now!" and "Democracy is not an Israeli monopoly!". Uri Avnery was there with his white beard and the perennial two-flag symbol, and Khulood Badawi who organized so many of the past month's anti-war protests, and Dr. Anat Matar of Tel-Aviv University with her decades-long involvement with Palestinian (and Israeli) prisoners, and Ya'el Lerer who took up the translating from Arabic and publishing of books which no mainstream publisher dare touch, and Thierry - a Swiss activist residing in Jerusalem who arrives to all demonstrators and protests on his motorcycle...

"...On January 8, 2007 we will hold a major academic conference on the subject of "Political or "security" prisoners?" at Tel Aviv University . The conference is sponsored by the Minerva Institute at Tel Aviv University and the Adalah Center ...."

The new Center, which is supposed to be dedicated to the study of Iranian culture and the history of the Iranian people, and to serve as an inter-cultural bridge, appears to have been recruited by the propaganda campaign that brands Iran as the ultimate threat to Israel, the Middle East and the entire world, thereby identifying it as the next target of U.S. (and possibly Israeli) military escapades in this region.

'So in a final analysis, the main achievements of the Israeli brutality will be more and more bloodshed and devastation on both sides, and a lot of entertainment for the bored Israeli military. When they get tired of playing (and/or losing), Israel will negotiate a prisoner swap and return to the status quo ante, in Gaza as well as in Lebanon, till next time. For many families on both sides, this will be too late.'

Prof. Zeev Maoz (political science) thinks Israel's battle with the Hizbollah is a "War of deception and stupidity"

There is still hope that some influential people will stand up and say: enough of this stupidity, enough of this blind political force that is creating tomorrow's worst enemies, in the same way we created the Hizbullah and Hamas.

There's practically a holy consensus right now that the war in the North is a just war and that morality is on our side. The bitter truth must be said: this holy consensus is based on short-range selective memory, an introverted worldview, and double standards.
This war is not a just war. Israel is using excessive force without distinguishing between civilian population and enemy, whose sole purpose is extortion. That is not to say that morality and justice are on Hezbollah's side. Most certainly not. But the fact that Hezbollah "started it" when it kidnapped soldiers from across an international border does not even begin to tilt the scales of justice toward our side.

"I have no doubt that we are to blame in this conflict", she says. "Since 1967, we have been occupying the Palestinian territories and we have not been willing to relinquish them. In '88 the Palestinians recognized Israel and settled for a state within the '67 borders. Since then, the blame falls on us absolutely. I deplore Palestinian terror, but since January 2005 all the Palestinian groups, except for Islamic Jihad, have declared a cease-fire. We are the attackers presenting ourselves as the attacked."

All generalizations are wrong, except this one: Israeli liberal intellectuals are against war. They have always been against it, and they even suffered greatly for their critical views, as they stress proudly. They were against the previous war, they will be against the next war, they are against all wars. There is just one minor exception, though: the present war, every present war, which they always support. Because the present war – well, that's something totally different from all those other wars! How can you even compare?! The present war is always inevitable, and necessary, and just, and worthy of support.

Believing that the current actions by the State of Israel in invading/attacking the State of Lebanon is both an unlawful and unwarranted attack upon innocent civilians by an aggressor nation, we call upon the United States of America and the United Nations to condemn the State of Israel, and the actions thereof, and to demand the immediate cessation of all military action by the forces of the State of Israel within the borders of the state of Lebanon, and to demand the immediate withdrawal of all personnel of the State of Israel from the State of Lebanon.

The Israeli army is hungry for war. It would not let concerns for captive soldiers stand in its way. Since 2002 the army has argued that an "operation" along the lines of "Defensive Shield" in Jenin was also necessary in Gaza. Exactly a year ago, on 15 July (before the Disengagement), the army concentrated forces on the border of the Strip for an offensive of this scale on Gaza. But then the USA imposed a veto. Rice arrived for an emergency visit that was described as acrimonious and stormy, and the army was forced to back down. Now, the time has finally came. With the Islamophobia of the American Administration at a high point, it appears that the USA is prepared to authorize such an operation, on condition that it not provoke a global outcry with excessively-reported attacks on civilians.
With the green light for the offensive given, the army's only concern is public image. Fishman reported this Tuesday that the army is worried that "what threatens to burry this huge military and diplomatic effort" is reports of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Hence, the army would take care to let some food into Gaza.
From this perspective, it is necessary to feed the Palestinians in Gaza so that it would be possible to continue to kill them undisturbed.

Some sanctions, such as an academic boycott, have a symbolic function. Such sanctions have a powerful ability to produce fruitful debate. The importance of this debate is especially apparent now, as the last attempt at an academic boycott caused a flood of Israel supporters trying to stifle all discussion of the occupation. The call for an academic boycott on Israeli universities specifically targets human-rights violations committed by these universities (violations which are too numerous to list here).

The struggle against the occupation must be total. It must be an anti-colonial struggle that will connect between external colonialism and internal colonialism. It cannot separate issues of inequality from issues of political justice, or the opposite. It means boycotting companies that produce goods for perpetuating the occupation, such as those companies which produce goods while oppressing their workers in Israel or outside of it. It is a struggle which understands the occupation in its totality. Not a separation between here and there, not a separation between state and society, not a separation between politics and culture, but an outlook which sees the occupation as an inseparable part of the imperial history in the Middle East.

Cheering for the Ayatollahs - TAU Professors denounce the US, back Iran

Hypocrite

This week, scanning the list of the thirty Tel Aviv University professors whose letter excoriated the school for allowing Mofaz to speak, one of whom actually became violent in the auditorium, I recognized the names of professors who had organized the Husseini appearance.
I was shocked when I saw the name Yisrael Gershoni, the same professor who convinced me that the right to free speech on campus – even for one's opponents – was a supreme value, and should not just be acknowledged but actually defended by placing one’s own body in harm’s way.
Now, with the shoe on the other foot, he has signed a letter stating that “the participation of the minister of defense as the keynote speaker at the opening of this conference…must not be permitted.”
Professor Gershoni: I still believe in the principle that you taught me in 1991. I am saddened that you no longer do.

Even though it is impossible to compare the sufferings of the residents of Sderot with the sufferings of the residents of Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya in the North of
the Gaza Strip, on which 5,000 shells fell in the past month alone, my heart also goes out to the residents of Sderot. It is their destiny to live in fear and agony,
because in the eyes of the army their suffering is necessary so that the world may understand that Israel is the restrained side in a war for its very existence.

Perhaps the novelty of active resistance against theoccupation opened up a discursive space in which the psychic vulnerability ofPalestinians could be addressed by mental health professionals. The newlyemerging Palestinian trauma discourse appropriated the category of PTSD in ahighly positivist fashion, providing extensive statistical data in order to presentproof of Palestinian suffering under occupation. It was mainly addressed to theWest, depicting the traumatization of the Palestinians under occupation as aspecial case within the PTSD paradigm. In this discourse there were no adultmales suffering of PTSD unless they were subject to torture in Israeli prisons;for otherwise the traumatization of Palestinians by the occupation is reportedonly with reference to children, youth and women. This discourse is stronglysupportive of the Intifada; it presents itself as located in the context of Israeliviolence on the one hand and Palestinian resilience and social solidarity on theother. Activism against the occupation is portrayed both as a sign of mentalhealth and as conducive to it. The same holds for support for the Oslo peaceprocess that followed the first Intifada in the mind-nineties.The outbreak of the second, violent Intifada in fall 2000 changed theway in which Palestinian health professionals portrayed traumatization by theoccupation. PTSD began to be related to social disintegration and to anepidemic of victimhood and victimization, in which Palestinians are presentedas helpless victims, while Israelis appear as traumatized perpetrators – eitherby the Holocaust or by their role as occupiers.

Professor Rachel Giora of the University of Tel Aviv backs boycott on her colleagues with different views;
"I support every form of open criticism against the current policies of the Israeli government in the occupied territories, whether it is an economic boycott other forms of resistance. A lack of such stances allows Israelis to assume that the world is not against them. But the world, or large parts of it, are against them. And rightly so."

Yigal Bronner, a Ta'ayush (Arab Jewish
Partnership) activist and former Tel Aviv University professor who was jailed for refusing to serve in the occupied territories.
Bronner, who now teaches South Asian languages at the University of Chicago, compared Israel to an addict dependent on its military might and U.S. aid.
"Being the clever addict that it is, Israel has created a semblance of normalcy," he said. "It created a sophisticated system of Apartheid and called it the end of the occupation."
Bronner called for an international "intervention of true friends" to save Israel from itself, and lambasted the U.S. Congress — "so-called friends that contribute to the demise of Israel" by continuing to support the occupation.

Just a few hours before Holocaust Remembrance Day commenced, Tel Aviv University (TAU) held the official initiation ceremony for its Center for Iranian Studies, a new research institute on campus. Some TAU faculty members were upset about that. A group of extremist professors held a demonstration, together with Arab and Jewish student radicals, and sent an official letter of protest against the Center to campus authorities, as reported in Israeli dailies Haaretz and Yediot Acharonot.

First, in their letter, they expressed fear that the new center will be "misused" to paint Iran as a radical, anti-Semitic and pro-terrorism state, and grant legitimacy to Western demonization of Iran. Second, they expressed concern that the operations of the center could be exploited by American imperialism in justifying American aggression against Iran.

Finally, the radicals were particularly upset because a speaker at the opening ceremony was the Iranian-born Sha'ul Mofaz, who had been Chief of Staff of the IDF and then minister of defense of Israel. As such, Mofaz is guilty, in the eyes of the protesters, of illegitimately fighting against Islamofascist terrorism, rather than appeasing it and capitulating to the demands of the terrorists.

The Center for Iranian Studies was funded with contributions by Jews who had escaped Iran for the West and succeeded there. After the ceremony, Mofaz commented on the radical protesters who disrupted it and suggested that they could better spend their time be visiting the families of Jews murdered by terrorists. According to the news reports in Israel, the faculty protesters were of the opinion that defending democracy requires the suppression of Sha'ul Mofaz's freedom of speech.

"...Among the leading voices opposing any Israeli action at all aimed at stopping the massive firing by Palestinian terrorists of Qassam and other rockets at Israeli civilians is Aviad Kleinberg, the chairman of the Department of History at Tel Aviv University. How convenient for him that his campus is not (yet) within range of the Palestinian rockets and missiles...
...Kleinberg's central thesis is that Israel is behaving like a barbarian terrorist state when it defends its civilians from these rockets...
...In other words, Israel shoots at the terrorists for the heck of it because it is a bloodthirsty irrational country trying to terrorize the poor innocent Palestinians for no reason.

TAU Law School and sets up a "Refugee Rights Clinic" as a joint
project with the pro-terror anti-Israel extremist group "Physicians for Human Rights" or PHR. This organization has never had a word to say in defense of the human rights of Jews not to be blown up by terrorists nor the right of Jews to defend themselves...
...Among its main activities has been its campaign to force Israel to accept as "refugees" Palestinian homosexuals claiming they are being persecuted by the Hamas and the PLO in "homophobic violence".

"If you listen carefully, you can hear the sounds of spring: Birds chirping, the buzz of mosquitoes, and the incessant sound of IDF artillery, turning the lives of innocent Gazans into a living hell...

...Qassams are primitive rockets. They can be fired from just about anywhere, even a backyard. They are not fired from open fields, and the gunmen do not need advanced equipment or complicated logistics...

...You can find an article, maybe even a picture, in Yedioth Ahronoth, of a dog at Kibbutz Zikim that was literally scared to death by the exchange of fire. "The artillery fire killed our dog," screamed the headlines. Who said Jews had no compassion?...
...And IDF attacks almost always strike the innocent.."

"One of the more tragic shortcomings of the regime set up by the PLO was its total inability to mount a credible defence against Israel’s invasion of the West Bank in 2002..."

"The obvious model for the transformation of the Israeli control system into a secular, democratic state is the transition experienced by South Africa. Tilley has an ambivalent attitude towards the value of the South African experience as a model for Israel/Palestine, dismissing it at one point as irrelevant, but repeatedly referring to it nonetheless. "

Yehouda Shenhav is among the better-known of Israel's anti-Israel academics. He has signed many of those anti-Israel petitions, collected regularly by certain academics, including one endorsing the Jewish woman arrested for helping her Palestinian boyfriend plan terror bombings, and another proposing international intervention to end Israeli sovereignty. Shenhav's main "academic thesis" has long been the claim that Asian/Sephardic Jews who came to Israel from Arab countries are in fact Arabs of the Jewish faith.

I oppose an international poetry festival in a city in which the Arab inhabitants are oppressed systematically and cruelly, imprisoned between walls, deprived of their rights and living spaces, humiliated in chekcpoints and the international laws are violated.

"...Lubin addressed the issue of what the Gaza disengagement means for Israelis. The majority of Israelis, she assured the audience, have no illusions that it is a courageous step. They know that Israel created a ghetto with no infrastructure and allowed no development, and that its army can re-enter at any time. What Israelis saw on television were not the weeping soldiers and mothers shown on American broadcasts, she said, but disengaged, well-trained soldiers dealing with screaming, orange-wearing fanatics and parents putting their children through unnecessary trauma. Within one week, Lubin said, things were back to the normal routine of targeted killings, bombing Gaza, and extending the apartheid wall in the West Bank...

"When peace activists in Israel want to shock their audience, they
sometimes refer to Gaza as a concentration camp.
Anat Biletzki of the human rights group B’Tselem put it this way last year: “I know that when you talk about concentration camps, Jews all jump up in horror. I’m not talking about gassing and I’m not talking about extermination camps. Concentration camps were camps where people were forcibly placed and had to live their lives..."

Given the continuity of Israel's colonialist policy before and after each election, and the push each election period gives to this policy, one can question whether colonialism is a conscious choice of the Israeli democratic game, but there can be little doubt that the democratic game is a conscious choice of Israel's colonialism.

The Apartheid Law seminar offers a unique opportunity for lawyers, law students, media professionals and political activists to hear first hand accounts and analysis from the predominant figures in the field.

We believe that the cooperative investigation of the Apartheid law – an issue which has been absent from public discourse in Israel – will consequently lead to public discussion and to civil action.
Session 2: The right for representation in criminal law in Israel – overview
Prof. Kenneth Mann, Tel Aviv Aviv University

“The Palestinian people are becoming a landless people through the wall,” Bronner said.
Bronner noticed the cement blocks of the wall are dated with the day of their erection. During the week of the Gaza Withdrawal, Bronner noticed overwhelming construction of the wall around East Jerusalem. Many sections of the wall had completion dates corresponding to the time of the Gaza Withdrawal. As the wall is constructed in an area housing units for Israelis are built.

The Bil'in people received the Israelis with great enthusiasm, offering refuge in their homes - and cold water. Some 25 Israelis were arrested, among them Dr Anat Matar of the Tel-Aviv University, Philosophy Department,

In this letter they state that they do not intend to serve in the Israeli army so long as it serves the Occupation. In his letter to the Minister of Defense, Alex writes among other things: "It is impossible to
serve in the occupation army without taking part in the injustices it causes. The occupation is the result of a policy and not imposed by circumstances. The extent and power of its ramifications for the Israelis
and Palestinians cannot be grasped. It is therefore unacceptable by any moral standard. Because one cannot serve in the army without taking part in
the occupation, I cannot, in good conscience, enlist."

This paper is of the programmatic type. My goal is to suggest that the Radical Left can, and should, play a more productive role in the effort to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict than it does at the moment. This, however, can only be done if we manage to allow some pragmatic insights to constrain our discourse – both in terms of our understanding of our own discourse and its audiences, and our conception of the conflict, its history and its future.

As you probably know from media reports, Yesh Gvul has taken a f urther step in its campaign against Israeli officers suspected of human rights abuses or war crimes. Operating on material we supplied, a UK law firm has formally filed criminal complaints with the local police, against a number
of senior IDF officers.

Is Israeli society losing touch with the rest of the world -- and with the reality of the on-going conflict with the Palestinians in the course of the Intifada? Israeli scholar Daniel Dor measures the breach between Israel's collective consciousness and international public opinion, and concludes that Israeli society has dangerously withdrawn into a sense of isolation and victimization -- in very large part because of the role played by the Israeli media during the reoccupation. Dor examines the ways in which the major Israeli media not only reported on events (or failed to do so) but played a key part in shaping opinion, setting the agenda and waging the propaganda war that accompanied the military offensives on the ground.

The Committee is an Israeli organization, which firmly believes that there can be no peace between Israel and Palestine so long as thousands of Palestinian so-called "security prisoners" and hundreds of administrative detainees continue to be held in Israeli prisons.
Members of the Committee believe that the Palestinian prisoners can and should play a significant role in advancing the peace process and in spreading the message that co-existence in the Middle East is indeed possible - but only if Israeli society pays attention to their hardships and puts an end to the systematic institutional discrimination against them - which exists first at the judicial level, and later on with regard to their imprisonment conditions and parole opportunities.

Course number 1071.3627.01
The course will account a number of psychological results of the long occupation in the Territories and its impact on the occupiers and the occupied. It will include the following subjects: Identity and alienation (personal and national) pattern of dialogues in the encounters of occupier-occupied, perception of the other and the attitude towards sufferings, the status of the child as subjective.

If there was a common element in the Israeli media coverage of the 2003 military operation “Defensive Shield,” it was a consistent refusal to accept any guilt for what happened in the Palestinian territories. That is what Daniel Dor argues in The Suppression of Guilt: the Israeli Media and the Reoccupation of the West Bank. If houses were abolished, civilians killed or Palestinian allies arrested, Israeli action was presented as a necessary response to Palestinian action, according to Dor’s provocative work.

This judge went as far as to declare in her verdict that the Palestinian resistance to the Israeli occupation is a "day-to-day existential threat to Israel". The total absurdity of this (paranoid?) statement [several hundred, perhaps a couple of thousands, poorly trained people with guns, against a regular army with well over a hundred thousand troops, capable of summoning within 48 hours another quarter of a million or so ("reserve") soldiers, equipped with thousands of top of the line tanks, probably close to a thousand combat aircraft, allegedly an arsenal of WMD; a military might most likely surpassing that of any other country
except the US, Russia and China] has escaped the media reporting this malicious verdict.

But it is important not to let the cases of abuse distract from the "normal" routine: Palestinian daily life is unbearable even on what Machsom Watch activists call "an English weather," i.e., a usual day without any exceptional event. If the roots of Palestinian frustration, despair, and violence – "terrorism," if you like – are to be sought, the checkpoint system is an excellent place to start.

It may be worthwhile, however, to consider how the world perceives us. In July 2004, the International Court of Justice in The Hague ruled that Israel must immediately dismantle those parts of the wall that were built on Palestinian lands. We disregarded the ruling. We are turning the West Bank into a prison for Palestinians, as we have already done in Gaza in the course of 38 years of occupation, every one of which is a violation of UN resolutions. Since 1993 we have been engaged in negotiations with the Palestinians, and in the meantime we continued expanding settlements. In its judgement, the Court recommended to the UN that sanctions be imposed on Israel if its ruling is not obeyed. The Israeli reply - no need to worry!

Where is the Palestinian Gandhi?" is a quite popular question, especially abroad. You won't often hear it asked (with the inevitable self-righteous shrug) here in Israel: after all, the Israeli culture itself worships violence, with the semantic field of "war" being the richest in the modern Hebrew language, with militarism as the state religion, and with popular wisdom expressed in rules of thumb such as "where force won't do, try more force."...
So the problem is the perpetrators, not the victims: it's Israel, not the Palestinians. The Palestinians don't have to watch the Gandhi film. They fought the First Intifada with stones (1987-1993) and were answered with Israeli bullets. They fought the Second Intifada (2000-2004) with weapons and were answered with Israeli tanks, Caterpillar bulldozers, and airplanes. And they now start a Third Intifada, a popular, unarmed, nonviolent struggle against the strangulating fence, which is answered with Israeli undercover soldiers who throw stones and want us to believe the Palestinians have done it.

Academic and political issues cannot really be kept apart. I think that it is our responsibility as academics to make a public stand about the boycott, as well as about the related issue of the academic freedom of the Palestinians in the territories that we have occupied. I think that it is a moral sin not to condemn the lack of freedom imposed by curfews, closures, roadblocks and systematic harassment of the Palestinian population...As you may know, my position towards the boycott is complex. I am against a full academic boycott because I think that basic channels of communication should be kept open, but I think that a restricted set of sanctions (both economic and academic) is legitimate...I am sick and tired of hearing that the critical and concrete decision of the AUT and similar decisions are anti-Semitic.

'Our suggestion is based on sound moral foundations that guide the approach of transitional justice.
If the implications of Israel’s recognition of the right of return could be shown to have no negative effect on the question of the continued Israeli Jewish national existence, while the benefits of recognizing that right, in terms of enhancing the prospects for reconciliation, could be immense, some of the fears blocking Israelis’ ability to even consider this issue may be alleviated. To the extent that this would facilitate reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians, a political outcome of great moral value would be achieved.'

the once quasi-legitimate Israeli sovereignty has become a violent occupation that no longer knows its own limitations.
Severing the Palestinian population from its natural surroundings severs them from their communal, social, and familial ties and violates their basic rights

Eva Jablonka, a neurobiologist at Tel Aviv University, explained why she had signed the petition in The Guardian. 'And I think that it has to come from every side.'
'As an Israeli I have to take some responsibility for what is going on in my country,' Jablonka said. 'You can't say: "Don't touch me. I'm a holy academic".'

So wake up members of the academia. The stain of this lot of madmen sticks to you as well, because you remain silent. Silence is not a confession. Silence is not concurrence. But in this war, against this madness, you are leaving a dear man, Prof. Amnon Rubinstein, almost entirely out on his own. Your silence, of the silent majority, is a silence that invites damage to the academia. If that happens, the responsibility will be yours.

"It is no wonder that HaCohen's article gets top billing on the anti-Israel, anti-Semitic site of the Holocaust-denying historian David Irving. Exactly four years ago, Irving lost a libel suit against Prof.
Deborah Lipstadt after she had claimed in a book that Irving was a Holocaust-denier and anti-Semite. The British High Court upheld Lipstadts claims in one of the most important legal rulings related to Holocaust denial. Many things can be said about Irving but he definitely is not a leftist. If Irving admires HaCohen, he must have a good reason. Somewhat
ironically, the headline on the page is The International Campaign for True History. Yes, this article is well suited to two people who disseminate the truth: Irving and HaCohen."

Remember these lines: when the next Israeli military strike needs its apologetics, all Marcus (and his colleagues) will do is re-air them. The Israeli media is not following Sharon in the path to peace: it is following Sharon wherever he goes, like a loyal hound, playing peaceful when its master is well-tempered, but happy to expose its sharp teeth when he takes to the hunt.

Israel can live with only two kinds of Palestinian leaders. It can live with a puppet who accepts Israel's sovereignty over the Palestinian territories (we may give him some "autonomy" in return), who is ready to give up 60 percent of the West Bank for Israeli settlements and apartheid walls (we may temporarily remove a checkpoint or two in return), who is willing to forget the Palestinian refugees (we may not insist on his conversion to Judaism in return). Israel has made several attempts to find or tame such a Palestinian poodle, but so far failed.

Alternatively, Israel can live with a fanatic, terrorist Palestinian scarecrow, with a murderous, uncompromising hardliner. The settlers often say it aloud: we prefer the Islamic Jihad, who want to throw us all to the sea. It is very easy to deal with such a leader, both nationally and internationally.

HaMoked’s main objective is to assist Palestinians whose rights are violated by the Israeli authorities or as a result of Israeli policy. Once a complaint is received, HaMoked contacts the relevant authorities, for instance the Civil Authority, the Military Attorney General, the State Attorney General, or any of a variety of governmental offices. When necessary, HaMoked files legal claims and submits petitions to the High Court of Justice. Concurrently, HaMoked endeavors to bring about changes in policy by the authorities and to implement legislative amendments that would improve the status of human rights in the Territories and East Jerusalem.

Israel is a racist state that came into being as a colonial project through an alliance of the European Jewish Zionists and the Western imperialist powers. The Zionists sought European support in settling Palestine, and in return the state to be established there would be a regional base for Western imperialism. The US supported the creation of a Zionist state. In 1948, Israeli military forces overran the bulk (78%) of Palestine. The remainder came under occupation in the course of the war of 1967.

Israel can live with only two kinds of Palestinian leaders. It can live with a puppet who accepts Israel's sovereignty over the Palestinian territories (we may give him some "autonomy" in return), who is ready to give up 60 percent of the West Bank for Israeli settlements and apartheid walls (we may temporarily remove a checkpoint or two in return), who is willing to forget the Palestinian refugees (we may not insist on his conversion to Judaism in return). Israel has made several attempts to find or tame such a Palestinian poodle, but so far failed.

Israel's systematic policy of injuring Palestinians cannot be explained as self-defence or as a spontaneous response to terrorism. It is an act of ethnic cleansing - a process in which one ethnic group is removed from territories that another is interested in ruling. In a place that attracts as much international attention as Israel/Palestine, ethnic cleansing cannot be carried out by a sudden act of mass slaughter or mass expulsion from the territory. Therefore there is a consistent process, the goal of which is slowly and gradually to compel people to die or to escape.

'The Shabak is trying to silence Fahima, a brave young woman who decided to check by herself what are the conditions in the Jenin refugee camp that cause Palestinians to act against Israel. She met there ordinary people who want to live a life of freedom and dignity.'

Peled summed up the current state of the peace process with this astonishing quote: “The tragedy, from a perspective of peace, is that the Israeli public won’t think about anything but their physical survival.” To which I suppose the vast majority of Israelis would respond, ‘Guilty on all counts, Mr. Peled.’ Normal people, when they’re under attack by religious fanatics, like to defend themselves. Peled likes to write theses blaming capitalism.

So in addition to its painful disillusionment, the War on Iraq left Israel's junta rather ridiculed. One junta member, former Minister (and former General) Ephraim Sneh (Labour), once praised the Israeli army as "the strongest military power between the Caspian Sea and Gibraltar". For all that military might, Israeli citizens are anything but secure. In fact, Israel probably sets a historic record in the disproportion between military might and actual security. The War on Iraq exposed once more the absurdities of Israeli militarism: billions of dollars were invested against a threat that did not materialise (and probably did not even exist), but the sense of insecurity has been intentionally nurtured even further.

The Israeli army must now feel deeply frustrated. One wonders where this dangerous sense of frustration will lead.

The other two options – genocide and ethnic cleansing – are waiting for the right opportunity, which has not arrived yet. But the recent movement of the idea of "transfer" (i.e. mass deportation) into main-stream Israeli discourse, together with the warnings of so-called "mega-attacks" (a new term introduced in the last weeks), are preparing the hearts for such measures.

The Apartheid Wall – the so-called "security fence" – presently being erected deep in occupied Palestinian land has already left about 12.000 Palestinian villagers outside it, trapped between the Wall and the Green Line. All this territory, between the Apartheid Wall and Israel proper, has been termed "the seam zone."

Keeping silent on this gigantic project and its genocidal implications, meant to prevent any fair future settlement (not to mention the Road Map), is a moral crime, of which almost the entire Western media is guilty.

Reinhart called for a general boycott of Israel, including its military, businesses and universities. She also appealed for protests to impede Israel’s construction of the wall of separation in and along the West Bank.

Herzog's Attack on the Bible Unjustified, by Hershel Shanks:
Almost all, like Herzog and Finkelstein, are serious scholars. But most of them also have a political agenda. Professor Avraham Malamat of Hebrew University publicly described one of them as both "anti-Israel and anti-Bible." At the extreme, they can even be viewed as anti-Semitic.

Yehouda Shenhav, Tel Aviv U:
"Determination to make the facts fit a historical narrative of oppression and exploitation also explains the arguments made by Yehouda Shenhav, editor of Teoria Uvikoret and former head of Tel Aviv Universitys Sociology Department, in a 1998 article in the daily Haaretz entitled, The Perfect Robbery. According to the essay, which attempted revisit the
history of the immigration of Iraqi Jewry to Israel in 1951, described the State of Israel as seeking to exploit both the Palestinians and Iraqi Jews

Linguistics professor Rachel Giora, who signed up to the Princeton initiative, says she has received letters suggesting she be fired from her post at Tel Aviv University. She describes the reaction of some of her colleagues to her support of the petition as "very hostile." Following "the example of white South Africans" who called for a boycott against their own country during apartheid rule, Giora says she joined the American initiative as she believes it will be more effective than local Israeli protests in pressuring the Israeli government to change its policies. "The harm I am inviting [upon Israel] is only temporary and may save us from much greater harm" in the long-term, she added.

The educational system, not unlike other sectors, is on the verge of collapse. This is usually what happens when you take a viable community and surround it with walls. But this is exactly what the Sharon government wants.

In 1969, the Israeli philosopher Yesayahu Leibovitz anticipated that in the areas of the occupation "concentration camps would be erected by the Israeli rulers... Israel would be a state that would not deserve to exist, and it will not be worthwhile to preserve it". How far are we from Leibovitz prophecy in the fenced Gaza strip?

Genocide is associated in our minds with mass graves, or convoys of population transfer. The slow death inflicted on the Palestinian people has, perhaps, no name yet, but still, how does it happen that the Israeli society seals its heart and its eyes from seeing it?

By now, much was written already about Barak's non-offer in Camp David.
..... In fact, Barak's Camp David was the second
round of his mastery of deception of public opinion.
also Israel defines its military action as a necessary defense against terrorism. But in fact, the first Palestinian terrorist attack on Israeli civilians inside Israel occurred on November 2, 2000.

"when you leave people no hope, there is no way to stop the madness of suicide bombing." and The new stage of Israel's 'separation' can no longer be compared to the Apartheid of South Africa. As Ronnie Kasrils, South Africa's Minister of Water Affairs, said in an Interview with Al Ahram Weekly, "the South African apartheid regime never engaged in the sort of repression Israel is inflicting on the Palestinians" (Issue of March 28 April 3, 2002). We are witnessing the daily invisible killing of the sick and wounded being deprived of medical care, the weak who cannot survive in the new poverty conditions, and those who are bound to reach starvation.

The model of boycott followed here is, indeed, that which was formed in the case of South Africa. Just a few years ago, in 1993, the whole world celebrated when the Apartheid regime in South Africa collapsed after 50 years of brutal discrimination and oppression.

Their immediate goal is to get the Palestinians off the international agenda, so slaughter, starvation, forced evacuation and 'migration' can continue undisturbed, leading, possibly, to the final realization of Sharon's long standing vision, embodied in the military plans.

The Israeli army has been terrorizing cities and villages in the West Bank....

Finally, there is one simple thing that anybody can do: Boycott Israel!... Israel is not the US. It is a small country with hardly any economy, and with a self-image completely detached from reality. It can be stopped.

Once again, Israel had a historical opportunity to reach a just peace with the Palestinian people, and to integrate in the Middle East. Instead, it turned this to another chapter of oppression and control.

Since 1967, Israel has never given up its claim on the occupied Palestinian territories; Israel has not dismantled a single settlement built there, and has never ceased to take Palestinian lands by an ever more sophisticate arsenal of dispossession: the "by-pass roads," the "checkpoints," the relentless harassment of the Palestinian population, and, at present, the project that epitomizes the policy of dispossession: the Apartheid Wall.

Precisely this is the aim of Israeli propaganda: to portray the Hizbollah as a terrorist group that violates the rules of the game. The facts, however, are that the Hizbollah pretty much follows the rules of good neighbourliness; it is Israel that breaches them.